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I don't see a thread for this one as yet so here goes. Stuck on 16 Down - irregular peacekeepers associating with old bastard.(9) I have un--t-r-- and am assuming UN refers to the peacekeepers

unnatural
a bastard was referred to as a "natural child"

btw ? is much easier to read for missing letters than - (and wordsearches use ?, so it could copied and pasted straight in)

Great, thank you

Hi

Might be brain-fog due to positive Covid test the other day, but I am struggling with parsing of 6d "Formally acknowledged King Brian's bent? (9)".

I have C ? R ? S ? Y ? D so I guess the answer is "curtseyed", but it seems a bit iffy to me. Formally acknowledged and bent could both be definitions, and it's what a female would do when meeting the King, but I don't see how the apostrophe works, either as a possessive or a contraction of "King is".

It certainly looks like curtseyed. I think it’s just a double definition, and I assume Brian refers to the Eye’s name for Charles. I agree it’s not very good

Struggling to parse 11ac: “Where pot may be spotted half-way through jazz piece”
Have got M?D?I?A. ‘Madeira’ is all I’ve come with, unless one or more of the crossings are wrong of course.

Perhaps MIDRIFF

It was Midriff, Mid Riff - there's an F at the end, from a crosser.

Of course! Thanks both.