Cryptic crossword No 3,524

Thanks tpg. I did the 'pure form' and I breezed through it. When you have the first letter of a solution given to you things go pretty quickly. It was lots of fun. Favourites included B, F, O, P, and W.

Tricky fun! Lots of clever mini stories raised a smile and the device got me the last few holdouts. Faves include: 13a, 19a, 22a, 23a and 4d, 5d, 18d, 21d

Congratulations on a fantastic grid fill tpg! No real dinosaurs in the solutions, and I’d have thought much harder to set than my recent perimeter pangram. AND no link words! I felt too time-pressed to attempt the pure version but still took a while to tease this one out. Standout clues for me were 7a, 11a, 24a! 2d, 5d, & 18d. Thanks for the fun! Hardly worth mentioning but…

I commend you on the grid fill - 10a apart (nho for me as a verb in the sense you give in your annos). Not the trickiest of puzzles and it certainly helps knowing you are working with a pangram of starting letters. A few of your surfaces required a bit of imagination to picture! 11a, 8d and 20d my podium. Thanks. PM

Well done on rising to the challenge that you set yourself tpg! Creating a link-free puzzle isn’t easy but you have proved to yourself it’s doable. Sometimes a link word can oil the wheels nicely and improve the surface, but very often a link-free clue will be smoother. I think that’s borne out in particular by 7a, 26a, 8d, 15d, 17d and 18d, which were my favourites. It seems as though I was puzzled by the same things as PM!