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Good morning Malone and thank you for coming back so quickly . . . I have both of them now.

Granama mentioned a common crossword use for ‘base’ but I don’t know what this is. Would it contravene forum rules for someone to tell me that? Google has been no help at all in that respect.

Any expansion on the hint of peasants and lovers please?

Thanks, CallMe...

The 'base' is e,defined in Chambers as 'the base of the natural system of logarithms'.

I'm trying to think of another hint for the peasants...

Thank you again Malone.
I’m realising I’ll be going back to proper dictionaries if I want to do these puzzles (which I DO) as you all mention Chambers quite a lot.
Back in the day, I called it The Big Red Boy and he took on a Life of his own. Relegated to the bottom shelf of the big cupboard these many years, he’ll be delighted to be called upon again.
Oo I’m minded of Michael McIntyres Five Spice sketch :-D

Sorry CMI, in the 'sauce' clue I neglected to mention the 'not in' ie 'in' is removed to leave 6 letters. It is a bit of a complicated clue and I parsed it after solving it.

For the 'Peasants...' clue, if you haven't solved it, I was familiar with the term for a lover but not a peasant. It may also follow cox or boat in nautical usage.

PS. I'd recommend getting the Chambers apps. It's nice to leaf through the paper version but the apps for the dictionary and thesaurus make life a lot easier.

Malone and Granama - your hints are being really helpful thank you. It all seems so obvious when you “get it” doesn’t it.
So, I now have the peasant one.
I think I have the seven letters I need for the sauce one, thanks to your extra help, but not able to extract any sauce yet.

Altogether, this has been great fun.
Thank you to everyone who put themselves out to offer advice . . . I didn’t even know there was a chambers app,

I’ll keep looking at the grid but guess the best thing now will be to wait for the answer page and work through that.

FYI I have got 13 of the answers altogether and feel as proud as punch

CMI, you have picked a rather tough one! As there are no prizes for the Inquisitor I don't think people will mind if rather more detailed help is provided 5 days after publication. The sauce is a Japanese version of soy sauce (gluten free!).

One of the great things about the Chambers app is dealing with anagrams. Someone on here suggested using Scrabble tiles which I thought was ingenious.

How are you doing with the 10 letter clues? The 'Law...' and 'Stable...' clues should yield to scrutiny. 👍

Ah, good old Google gave me the sauce using your (big) hint.
I got the Law early on.
I feel I should be able to get the stable one: I’m assuming it’s an anagram, but just can’t work it out or in fact get the letters to anagram
I feel so close with the Union one too.
It’s good to know people might not mind me getting more detailed help.
But you know what . . I can’t wait to find out about the picnic

Hi Callme..,

Like Granama, I find the Chambers app to be an invaluable solving aid. In addition to it's anagram function, it also allows you to put * in place of missing letters in a word and and will then displays all possible options.

As Granama said earlier, you've picked a particularly challenging for a first effort, so bravo on getting so far:-)

Thanks again🙂everyone’s encouragement is very motivating
I got the Stable one👍🏼Though I don’t seem to need the word “completely” which is a bit perplexing.
Also, I’ve just realised that Nancys street is the same type of clue as Senior to Lorraine . . . Tho I’m still working on the answer.

Another question please - how do you use an anagram solver when, as in this crossword, you don’t know which letter to leave out?