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Thanks, Hamish. Great fun, lovely clues - shades of Araucaria - and the nina was definitely icing on the cake.

Late as ever (my husband was determined to struggle on), with an empty Nw corner: Brendan's 48 about the Nina gives me the first letters of 1 (now solved, how did we miss it?),2 &3, but doesn't help with 7 9, 12. A nudge for any one of them might be all we need!

Is the _N___ of 9 perhaps a viewpoint, physical or figurative,?

Ah, got them all now. LoI 12a. Will now look at the Nina. Thanks to Brendan for 48, which led me to this last group of elusive answers!

Now the deadline for entries has passed, I can copy here the text of a letter which will be in the Guardian tomorrow:

"I apologise to solvers who visited the web address hidden on the perimeter of last Saturday’s prize crossword only to find they had been redirected to the music video for a Rick Astley song. In fairness, last Saturday was the anniversary of the song’s release date, the solutions to 16D and 11D were RICK and ROLL, and the initial letters of the clues spelled “NEVER GONNA TELL A LIE AND HURT YOU”. I feel I gave ample warning."

It was fun to watch you all working on this - but I can't believe none of you spotted the acrostic :-)

Take care,

Hamish/Soup

Hamish/Soup
Might have made more sense if I had heard of Rick Astley!
I think I had ROCK rather than RICK anyway....

Thanks for visiting, hamishsoup.
Ouch, should have thought of looking for the acrostic!
But the excuse is that I'd never heard of Rick Astley before this puzzle. 😳

Well I had heard of Rick Astley so have no such excuse.
Excellent work Hamish, thanks for letting us know!

Well done, Soup!

So good. (Missed the acrostic because I never look at all the clues together on the app: clearly a mistake!)

Thanks again Soup— did anyone spot the initial letters of clues spelling never gonna tell a lie and hurt you?
Pure genius.