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rogissimo

27th August 2023, 11:17
I’ve just worked out 54a, Castafiore. It’s a river plus shilling, and the definition is ‘outlay’. An abbreviation used by accountants and the like, I guess.
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rogissimo

27th August 2023, 11:19
roof - it also appears in 1dn, where the definition is broadly synonymous with that in 51dn
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jono

27th August 2023, 11:19
Three of the four letters are a theme word so the wordplay yields just one letter. Defn is outlay (informal)
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castafiore

27th August 2023, 11:20
OK - have just got it. But am still not up to 30 missing theme words. Only 29.
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rogissimo

27th August 2023, 11:26
I’m with both twit and jono: only 29 single theme words and only 4 repeats. I’ve scoured again and can’t find another duplicate.
Help with the following would be appreciated:
6a: this must be a theme word solution, I think, but I don’t get what ‘district official’ is doing.
9a: I don’t get the ‘patches on a page’ bit.
48d: how does ‘in the heart of hell’ indicate the first three letters?
I suspect that my problem may lie in not having a decent dictionary to hand!
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rogissimo

27th August 2023, 11:30
Castafiore: you’re in the same boat as the rest of us then: only 29, and (I’m guessing) only 4 duplications.
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castafiore

27th August 2023, 11:33
Rogissimo - I got 6a and 9a definitions from Chambers. 6a does mean 'district official' and it's also a theme word. Don't know whether we should count it as one of the four, but if not, I'm one short. 9a does have the meaning of patches on a page. 48d has a 4-lever theme word at the end, leaving the 3 middle letters of a 5-letter word for hell.
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jono

27th August 2023, 11:34
Interesting Rogissimo, that we are all in the same position.
6a district official is the definition (German)
9a patches on page is also a definition (who knew?)
48d add letters at the beginning and end of those three letters and you will find a word for hell
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rogissimo

27th August 2023, 11:41
Thanks so much, Castafiore. So I needed a better dictionary for 6 and 7 ac (though I agree with you that if 6 is a themed solution, the first two words of the clue shouldn’t be there, and if it isn’t we are missing a themed solution as well as one of the 30!)
As for 48d, I was just being dense.
It would be a shame if the instructions proved to be defective in one respect (or arguably two respects), as it gives ammunition to the Maskaradophobes (much in evidence in this thread, both by the comments and by the absence of many of the usual posters), and it becomes more difficult for fans like me to fight the setter’s corner.
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jono

27th August 2023, 11:42
If I was to count 6a as one the theme word full answers then I have five of those. But it does get me to the magic number of 40 theme words in total (including the duplicates).
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