10a made my day... 17a not so much, but thanks for including me in the puzzle... I got got by 18a (I think it's ambiguous?) and 23d (I'm hopelessly lost on that one)
Hi! Thanks for the comments. Chambers Thesaurus lists STOT as a synonym for "bounce" although it is listed as Scottish. In the North-East of England it is a common word in the Geordie dialect for "bounce", as in, "The rain's stott'n' off the nettie tops" (It's raining heavily). Wordplay: ST = "the way"; to get = the second part follows; OT = Old Testament - "a book". 17A - the word is in Chambers otherwise I would not have used it; I am circumferentially challenged myself. Thanks again for the comments.
Enjoyable overall. A couple of things - In 17A, "is" is in the way, "has" would work for the cryptic reading. 18A is indeed ambiguous. The homophone indicator resides in the middle of the clue and the crucial letter is unchecked. Therefore this puzzle has two solutions. When you read the clue naturally you'd expect "prior" to be the answer which makes it a tiny bit worse. In 24A, "threw" is not an anagram indicator, "throw" might work as an imperative or "thrown" even so the issue is easily fixable. In 11D, I can't really make the clue work as a cryptic definition and therefore would have liked to see "fuddy-duddy" rather than the plural to make clue and answer match. Take care.
Thank you for your reply.
27A "has" would ruin the surface reading; I take your point, however.
I have come across clues similar to 18A in many published cryptics. I seem to have overlooked the fact that the E and O of the two words are interchangeable, making solution ambiguous, as you so kindly pointed out.
24A Difficult to understand why "throw" is an anagrind yet "threw" is not.
11D The "?" is there to indicate that there is not an exact grammatical match.
Re 27A, yes, that's what I implied. 24A The mysterious ways of cryptics... I take your point about 11D. Forgot a couple... In 22D, assault is only there for the surface. In 23D, I see the OT more as a collection of books rather than a single one.