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I enjoyed this but cannot see the wordplay for 28d. Please may I have a hint?

kitsune - it's a 'sounds like' clue. Definition last 6 words.

I'm still stuck on

17a - King educated..... assuming def is last 3 but not seeing what to do with the word 'educated' .

and 30a - Scut's knob of hair..... assume def is first two, but maybe it's first 4. If the former, 'hair's the difficulty; if the latter, then maybe round isn't the usual.

I want to put this to bed before I go away, so any assistance much appreciated.

Last time I took one with me, I sat in a 50 year old camper trying to solve clues with no dictionary and no Internet. It was like Life on Mars without the nylon suits and casual sexism.

Whistler, abbreviate the 'educated'...

PS Thanks for your earlier, interesting post.

30 - it's the first four words. The 'round' is longer than the usual abbreviation, it's a real word, and it's followed by the usual 'that is' .

Know the feeling - on a business trip to back of beyond in Nigeria - No reference books and no internet/phone connections - managed to finish times crossword by perservering but came up short till return on listener ... didn't realise how often google/thesaurus came to the rescue for proper nouns or 'favoured' scottish words ...

Last to whistler @ 53

Ah, thank you, Malone. Once again to my rescue. Now just have to work out the last two characters.

Crates- I'm glad it's not just me. Easy to forget how exhausting it must have been when one had to use ones brain! Mind you, I seem to remember Whistler's Mother had all manner of books that gave you backwards, missing letters etc. So, perhaps, I romanticise the 1980s.

HaHa - have a vague memory - many, many moons ago of a crossword companion that did just that ... a very basic forerunner of 'crossword solver' ...

I enjoyed wrestling with this but have to face the fact that Stick Insect has me on the mat. I have a full grid, except for 3d which I cannot fathom, despite having four sensible looking letters at the start. Also struggling with the third character, which suggests that one or more of my corrections in 5-8 are wrong; the other three are fine and I can see them in the grid. So near and yet….