(highlighted clues were unsolved until Saturday’s Age was consulted)

RC and I met Saturday morning at Il Fornaio on the benches that make for a comfortable solving of a crossword. And comfortable it indeed proved to be, although perhaps too comfortable; slapping our heads in astonishment is all we could do for not having solved the following:

19 across: Hardest crank gear (7)

Because we were both thinking it was a double-meaning clue, we missed the easiest of anagrams: hardest crank = threads = gear.

Despite that, we managed to get through the crossword pretty well. Nothing was particularly worthy of note about it, although it was great to hear from RC that N?, a DA neophyte, had managed to solve a few clues on her own the previous night before boarding a plane and heading to Laos.

May we all one day excite ourselves with a DA before boarding a plane to places far away.