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CDLXXXVIII

This puzzle seemed much more difficult than previous ones, and I notice there is a new setter who calls him or herself Balatro, who may be a temporary replacement for the usual setter known as Auctor.
With the help of the clever people at Danword I have completed it but don't fully understand a lot of the clues and answers provided. I would be interested to hear from any Latin scholars who can enlighten me. I will give just one example, 21across, the clue is "Post far atrum abrasum reperitur vomer". The answer I am told is aratrum, which means "plough". The clue I think means "after the husked grain is scraped off the ploughshare is discovered". So I wonder why this should lead one to the answer given. It would be helpful to a new setter to have some feedback from readers, and I suggest any such quotations are identified so that we can look them up and get the context which will help translation.

Hally, Danword often just gives 'answers' as 'words that fit the letter pattern' - they don't always match up with the clues themselves! That answer for 21 A looks right, but...

I haven’t done Latin for 50 years, but isn’t it just a cryptic, scraping off the F of (f)ar atrum to leave aratrum?

Malone
Thank you, yes, but we can check the answers as this unlike Private Eye, is not a prize puzzle, so Aratrum is certainly correct.

Thank you for your interesting insight, which I have learned from.

Thanks,Hally. I have seen one or two entertaining (and totally wrong) answers from such sites!

Hello Hally, it's good to see someone else does the Latin crossword! Balatro is actually a regular setter, with Auctor and Lanifex, and I think at least one other. All the setters are usually very good at identifying direct quotes so 21a in this week's was definitely just cryptic.
I'm lucky that I still have a lot of my textbooks from learning Latin some 50 years ago (and quite a good memory for it) but there are also useful online resources apart from Danword.