The Demon didn’t fail to live up to its name and we could hear the brain cogs turning as you tried to find the answer to 67dn ‘Subjective reporting, … journalism’. Gung-ho didn’t fit, neither did genre. The answer (you may want to make note of this one for future reference) was GONZO. It appears in both our Collins and Oxford dictionaries and was invented by American Hunter S Thompson. It is the journalist’s equivalent of method acting, requiring first-
hand experience rather than just poetic licence.

A lackey was a uniformed manservant, the word later taking on the meaning of a toady or sycophant. At 60ac it was a clue to MINION. PILION, PINION and SIMIAN were incorrect.

Aurum is Latin for gold and ‘Of gold’ at 72dn was AURIC or AURUC. Our judges spotted ARAIC in one entry where ‘Young salmon’ at 79ac was entered as PRAT. You needed PARR.

murexMUREX proved hard to find for some of you. It was the answer to ‘Tyrian purple dye source’ at 93ac. Murex is a genus of sea snails which were the source for the very expensive royal purple dye first produced by the ancient Phoe­nicians. The snails were collected and the animals either provoked to release the substance or the shells crushed. Thousands of shells were required to colour even the hem of a garment. The dye gets its name from the Mediterranean city of Tyre, which was a centre for the production of the
purple dye.

KIBOSH is a great word and was at 100ac in answer to ‘Stymie, put the … on’. The origin of this expression is lost back in history somewhere – Dickens used it, spelling it kye-bosh. Collins also spells it as KYBOSH so we accepted that as well.

Sharing quite a few letters with kibosh is another odd-looking word not heard so much nowadays, AKIMBO at 111ac. ALIMBO was incorrect for ‘Hands on hips’. The word is usually used in combination with ‘arms’ – “She stood with arms akimbo” and suggests a defiant stance.

‘Shackle’ was FETTER not GETTER at 121ac, ‘Brilliance’ was ECLAT at 123ac and ‘Crass’ was BOORISH not BOARISH at 139ac.

A WIMBLE sounds like some­thing a nun wears (or maybe a Womble?) but is in fact a ‘Hole-boring tool’. WIMPLE is the medieval headdress and so was wrong for 109ac. WINBLE was simply incorrect.

The ‘Short-tailed Old World monkey’ at 136ac was MACAQUE, which macaquetook a bit of hunting as you weren’t helped by the first letter crossing with another word. A couple of incorrect ans­wers were noted by our judges includ­ing TALAPUE and SALATUE. We could not find either of these and assume they were wild guesses. We also couldn’t find MACACUE as an accepted alternative spelling.

If you put DENSE for ‘Luxuriant (growth)’ at 76ac you had 54dn and 62dn incorrect. ‘Huge’ was ELEPHANTINE and ‘Cruel’ was MERCILESS.

Over to the Goliathon where at 62ac some of you tried to fit FILES for ‘Rubs with emery’ but this made for headaches at 48dn and 49dn. ‘Compassionate’ was HUMANE and ‘Wove (one’s way)’ was WENDED, but for these to fit you needed SANDS for 62ac. This may seem like a difficult clue for SANDS but we couldn’t say ‘Rubs with sandpaper’, as that would take all the fun out of the search. Both CRAMPS and CLAMPS were accepted for 118ac ‘Workbench vices’.
The ‘Recollections’ at 159ac were REMINISCENCES not REMANISCENCES or REMINI­SCENSES and ‘Spangle’ at 134dn was SEQUIN not SEQUEN.
The trickiest spelling in the Bigcash was at 21ac where ‘Wigs’ were TOUPEES not TOOPEES.