Puzzlebrains

...but this is generally only recommended if he is wearing asbestos underwear.

Here's a fun cryptic clue:

Imp opener, after some harassment, embraces initially high-earning movie that premiered on July 21, 2023 (enumeration withheld)

That was, of course, the bantam phantom.

For every boat? (4,4)

(edit: this is horrendously difficult. Sorry. )

Oh, of course! I've finally realised that the bantam wasn't mostly ghostly...

Well, you'd better go and solve it then... (It gets worse from there. )

My favourite follow-up line is Y H H N W H D "yo-ho-ho, no wonder he's dead"

F M O A D M C

Ship Shape And Bristol Fashion I never understood that one. It feels as though it's one of those phrases that was made up by a PR firm pretending that it was a "genuine" thing, or else that it was actually meant sarcastically (which would be a far more British tradition...) Looking it up, there's t...

I'd have got ISIHAC instantly. But I'd imagine that IHGAC would technically be a more 'well-known' usage. (I'd probably use IHGAC in a puzzle, for example.)

I don't think it's especially obscure. But (as ever) I am not a representative sample.

Anyone looking for a fun* way to pass some time, I offer you *The Password Game. All you have to do is provide a password that meets all of the (increasingly absurd) constraints. It gets very silly and far too much like hard work quite quickly, but the execution is marvellous. https://neal.fun/passw...

#9 made me laugh.

I've got most of them I think, but this isn't really my specialist subject. (#2 took ages because I couldn't work out where the Y had gone.)

Hippy Birdy!

Thank you all.

And the puzzles are now here. Have fun.

S T W T R-T G

...will be along before the end of the month. Possibly sooner than that, but I'm not promising anything. :D This will technically be the last issue of 2022 (which people paid for.) I do not currently know what is going to happen for the rest of the year, but there will be some more puzzles. Eventual...

One word is hyphenated, and some might argue that it ought to be two words.

Hippo Birdy!