Sorry for the delay in getting this to you, but at the time I had planned to write this blog, I was sitting in a cold train in snowy Aviemore because the windscreen wiper had broken!  Two hours later, we were eventually bussed to our final destination.

And people ask me why I insist on using my car when I could take public transport??????

Anyway - to the puzzle.  Once you had worked out what Paul wanted you to do with the “unclued” lights, it became quite easy.  I saw the artifice quite early, so rattled off the puzzle in less than ten minutes, impressing the young man opposite me on the train up to Inverness.

I’ll give you the special “reverse cryptic” clues first, then a couple of the others worth a mention.

12 PLUM DUFF - DUFF being the anagrind and PLUM = (lump)*

16,4 CAST ADRIFT - ADRIFT and (acts)*

24,13 DOWN TO THE GROUND - GROUND and (withstood tune)*

1,23 STOMACH UPSET - UPSET and (satchmo)*

2,15 FALSE DAWN - FALSE and (wand)*

19,20 SEASIDE RESORT - RESORT and (disease)*

Other clues to note:

ACROSS

11 RA(V-EU)P

12 SO-U-THE-A-ST

21 DO(ORB-E(ngagement))LL

26 ERSATZ - (tears)*+Z - can you define Z as “the 26th”?

27,25 B-ATTLE(e)’S-HIP - didn’t like non-English because that would indicate ATTL rather than ATTLE, which still has an E=English in it.

DOWN

3 SCOR(e)-P-10 - “10″ = IO is not one of my favourite devices.

6 IRRADIATE - hidden backwards in “secrET AID ARRIving”

7 (<=FL(1)AT)-IN

8 (<=NET)PIN(B-OWL)ING

14 GAS-T(R)IT-IS

16 C(<=SOL)URE

No blog for this yesterday, doubtless due to unforeseen circumstances. This isn’t a blog, but I think Paul’s puzzle deserves a mention.

Six of the clues were of a kind, with no further definition. These were one- or two-word clues, for two-word or multi-word answers. The answer, in each case was a phrase containing an anagram of the clue plus an anagram indicator.

So, for example:

1,23 Satchmo? gave STOMACH UPSET

2, 15 Wand? gave FALSE DAWN

16,4 Acts? gave CAST ADRIFT

The one I thought really brilliant, though, was:

24, 13 Withstood tune? (4,4,2,3,6) which gave SUIT DOWN TO THE GROUND — wordplay is *(withstood tune), with ‘ground’ as the anagram indicator.