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Sybilia,

Join the club - I draw out my grids on A4 foolscap rather than print them off and coloured in those 2 groups with the same blue highlighter - I completely missed that they are slightly different shades!

Finally finished this, after a bit of trouble in the south east corner. Really enjoyed it once I worked out what I needed to do and had solved enough clues to start the grid fill and get hints for the remaining answers.

For completeness I have one remaining mystery - can someone explain the wordplay for clue ab - Plant protection revoked by Old King Neddy (8) ? I am baffled.

Hi Kaylee,

ab - 3 letter "protection" reversed/'revoked' + 2 letter "Old King" + 3 letter "neddy" (slag word for a fool.

apologies, "slang" not slag!

Ah yes, it makes sense now. Thanks brendan.

Was not familiar with neddy, but should have spotted the old king.

Thanks Kaylee, it was pretty devious to begin Neddy with a capital letter, especially following the king.

Well... thanks to all for trying it, and Lumen, I'm so sorry you didn't finish it. Doing the grid fill I was simply aiming to fill the grid with as few double- or triple-unchecked as possible, so I didn't notice that there were so many of the same letter. It didn't help that an early tester realised that I'd gone the wrong way down a one-way street and I had to rework the entire bottom left corner of the grid. The aim of a crossword setter is to make the solver feel they've entered in a fight with you and won fairly, without them realising you've let them win... if you couldn't finish it, I failed at that aim, so I'm really sorry to have broken your streak.

Well done to those who solved it - very, very good work. It turns out it was quite hard. As ever, it's interesting seeing how people get stuck. I'm fascinated by the fact that I was seriously worried it was too easy when I submitted it. Just goes to show. I won't be a regular IQ setter - they're just too bloody hard - but I do have ideas for perhaps occasional ones. And you'll see me in the Guardian's Cryptic and Genius slots too.

Take care, all.

H/S

PS Jack Aubrey, remind me which of my (three!) colleges you're a past member of?! I'm ashamed to say I've forgotten.

Thanks for popping in and giving us your views Hamishsoup. As I said in one of my earlier posts it was a very challenging but rewarding puzzle.

Can I ask if the similarity in shade of the 2 blueish groups was intentional or an unforeseen result of the printing process?

This is ridiculous. It took me about an hour to solve all the across and down clues, from which I was able to write in all the "changed" thematics (leaving the odd first or last letter where there's choice of two).

Since then I've Googled all the 7a names (or both where there might be choice) but after 4 hours (I kid you not) I've managed to parse 9 of the 14!

Take "Old bird of prey nests on islands" - the first 4 letters are "an old bird of prey" but how can the remainder come from "nests on islands"? Even if "nests on" just means sits on top of in a down clue it still doesn't work - Chambers shows it as an archaic form of "ashore" and I just don't think they mean the same thing.

Anyway, that's just one of the 5 still outstanding and it's late and I need some rest. Tomorrow's a big day - my beloved Iron's are hosting Chelsea and our brave Lionesses could make sporting history - wouldn't that be terrific 🤞

Please ignore my previous post, it was meant for 1817.