Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

…7d extracts as a verb is the defn. Google Haley to find his most famous work.
17/24 is a double definition. Out of sight literally, out of one’s mind figuratively.
Hope that helps.

Brilliant! Thanks Jono. On 16 I'd attached 'originally' to the word before rather than the ones after, and was then blinkered into looking for words beginning with s.
And now I see the style from 10 and 14 also being employed in 17,24 - clever and fun.

Thanks for the tip on 16d - I also was guessing 'slackers' but wasn't happy with it.
But I'm still stuck on 25, last one to go in.
B * T * E * / O * F
Any phrase I can think of that fits the letters, I can't parse.

Personally I felt very surprised when this 'tribute' appeared without any other notification on the web apart from the Big Dave reference.
I was not alone in feeling a bit put out -
https://twitter.com/enigmatistelgar/status/1667539859794173952?s=46

It was late evening when I started this tribute puzzle. What a delight to see some of the original clues, some of which I remembered

Here's an interview from 2011, thanks to "Buenchico"

https://www.crosswordunclued.com/2011/11/interview-roger-squires.html

jvector 25a
the first word is a casino visitor (probably, though not necessarily - and he could be elsewhere as well!)
the scond word could be "on vacation"
your letters are correct

Thank you chrise. Can anybody use a dented tea ray just now? :-)

Thanks for the clue hints, esp for 16d; they helped parse my last couple, and confirmed that my unparseable entry for 16 SLACKBUS didn’t make sense. (A ‘slack bus’ seems to be part of an electrical circuit that doesn’t do ‘real’ work so struck me as plausible for a long time… but the actual answer is a goodun!)

Jazzgirl@54, many thanks for posting that link.

Do paid you see this Guardian article which includes a tribute by Araucaria (himself aged 90 at the time, to the “young master Squires” age 80)…

https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/shortcuts/2017/dec/18/farewell-rufus-the-guardians-record-breaking-crossword-setter

“Do paid” = Did
Don’t know what happened there!

Thank you for the link Jono. I and others are finding it hard to find an obituary escept for this which I found a little while ago
https://qsqnews.com/2023/06/11/death-and-obituaries-of-roger-squires-news/?feed_id=111&_unique_id=6485e3322f0ae