I agree with others that this was harder, and of a different order, to usual. Nevertheless, there was lots to enjoy. I especially like 12 and 24 across. Very neat, and witty.
I literally had no idea that 11d was a hidden until coming on here. I was tying myself in knots trying to parse it!
Re 2d, I looked online, and there seems to be some debate about the writing of 99. Apparently, the Romans themselves were quite loose/inconsistent about how they wrote their numbers with variations being found on various carvings. This answer (to the 99 question) makes sense imo, and I'm with others who think IC in a crossword context is fine!
"Today's conventional way of writing 99 into Roman numerals is XCIX.
However the Romans themselves would have probably calculated 99 on an abacus counting device as LXXXXVIIII and then wrote it out as IC (-1+100 =99)"
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∙ 14y ago