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nearly finished. i've read the discussion on 23, and am still not clear which the 4th letter is.

i got the long one from definition and crossers, but have no idea of the parsing

Re 23 the last two words are the definition.
For the long one, how do you make additive into addictive?

thanks jono. that's rather loose for a core clue!

I agree Chris. I guessed the first word but the rest only came with the help of crossers. Though I was surprised to find the full expression is in Chambers together with a three letter abbrev.

As usual, whatsoever wavelength I operate on it is not Picaroon's!

I had never heard of 14d although the parsing pointed me in the right direction & Google solved it for me.

It's a DNF as I have A_V_S for 23d my LOI so am pretty sure one of my crossers is wrong, or its a word that I don't know.

My familiarity with the subject made 5,1,15 leap out at me once I had a few crossers but I where the addictive additive comes into it I have no idea!

I know how revered Picaroon is in this community but once again a pretty joyless experience for me which I guess makes me the outlier.

Any help with 23d much appreciated.

justsolve
check your spelling of 22a

That’s interesting, jono. I think your experience of 5ac etc was similar to mine in that, unlike chrise, I didn’t get the solution from the definition - I’ve heard and seen the phrase probably many times before, but somehow it hadn’t lodged in my brain. So my way in was through working out what was going on with the cryptic element (!), which gave me the first word. Some crossers then nudged my brain to the complete phrase.
I wouldn’t say that the clue was loose - it’s an unusual device and I’m not sure what to call it, but I’ve certainly seen something similar before and I like it. It’s all part of the range of devices adopted by Picaroon which, for me, make his offerings a consistently enjoyable challenge. As geeker said at the top of the thread: a star setter.

Hi JS,
Your A is wrong in 23d. I suspect it’s just a typo.

justsolve - re 5ac etc, see jono at 12 above, and also think periodic table. Hope that helps.

rogissimo @17 re the long one
The clue is fair enough for the first two words. but surely it is very loose for the last two?