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After 30 mins I had about half solved. After another 30 mins I had failed to solve any other clue.
Having looked up the answers I think this is a very hard crossword .
I can't parse 2d and 10a .
Never heard of the answer to 18a.
That's three weeks on the trot where I have got nowhere near completing.

the parsing of 2d invilves a rather non-pc word
10 move an r slightly and split it 1,7

Can someone give me some hints for 3d and 9a please? I'm also stuck on 24a, despite the earlier hints. Found this quite a tricky one overall.

3d mythical birds
i don't see the wordplay in 9a. the definition refers to pubs
i said earlier the definition for 24 is odd. think alps

9a first three words are a cryptic definition, spin doctor in the political sense

i don't see that at all, jono - i must have got it wrong!

Chrise

I think you got it right. Those first three words mean how something looks - therefore whole thing is Double Def

Can anyone give me any pointers as to what part the word "protecting" has in the 15a clue? It seems particularly clumsy to me.

Bewildered by parsing of 9. Definition is clearly the first 3 words, but the remainder of the clue makes no sense to me.

15a: "Protecting" means that "Australia" is inside of the partial anagram formed by the other 2 anagrist words.