Financial Times 14,854 by CHALMIE

A very enjoyable puzzle from CHALMIE this Friday. There were some devious twists and turns that extended the solving time by atleast 25% for me. A couple of clues also had me googling feverishly for checking the parsing but otherwise relatively unambiguous.

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Independent 8,839 by Monk

Rather a difficult Monk today I thought, but as usual very enjoyable. There are one or two loose ends which, thanks to the wisdom of those reading this blog, should be tied up before the end of the day.

And of course there’s the Nina, which I half saw and then forgot, to be reminded by Herb @1, who saw rather more than I did. The bottom row is a clear statement, so I looked at the top and couldn’t understand what was happening. All explained below. Very good. I can’t see why Herb thinks he hasn’t got it, for it clearly refers to the Russian novel.

Definitions underlined.

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