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The one that still has me stumped is one that I thought would be one of the easier ones. 'Brief look in the mirror wanting the same character'. I may be wrong but I'd think there's only one (6 letter) option but I made that leap of logic about another one.

I was held up by making the wrong assumption about the top right down entry which shuffled things about a bit but once that was resolved things gradually yielded.

Oh, and I thought 'Time restricts searching' was a bit of a stretch re searching.

Take the last letters from 'look' + 'mirror' (a perfect replica) same characters lost.

Granama,
'Brief look' is 'ey(e). 'Mirror' is not a reversal indicator, as I initially thought.

Aha! Thanks Mattrom and Drxx. I fell onto 2 traps, one being mirror, the other thinking 'brief look' was an abbreviated 'look'. Although that really would have been 'loo'.

Definitely a puzzle of two halves this one!

...the former inside the latter.

Yes, granama1 - the undefined clues were tough all the way (even knowing what you're looking for}.

Rather than boing the old thread and have 3 IQs on page 1 (Brendan already got confused 😄), I note that the solution for 1815 refers to 'variable tread' staircases in the garden rather than the staircase in the house. I guess that covers all the bases. 👍

Ok, spotted the “extra” and the transform. I haven’t bothered with the thematic clues. I don’t think there is any ambiguity about the two thematics suggested in earlier posts. One of the 5a possibilities is a (relatively) recent creation without a clear 7a, the down entry has only one single word version. All told, I’m not very convinced about declaring a single definitive 7a for most of the thematic entries but that’s just a quibble.

The undefined clues/answers offer an interesting (I think) but selective (I agree) history lesson. And there is a degree of ambiguity - although I guessed right each time.
It was the precise imprecision of one of them that made me wary enough to tackle the rest ('sometimes known as...' but giving the exact years when that was). I couldn't find it anywhere in the wiki entry at first.