LR's Bonus puzzle!

A quick extra post sharing @LRxword's puzzle that he gave us on Twitter yesterday. He must have known some of us would be sad to see him on hiatus from Mondays for a while. I'm glad to have RM back, though - I enjoy her wordplay.

This one had a trick to play to get the two 15-letter answers, only reading the clues there are more than 15 letters in the answer, so something has to go. It was confusing for a long time, mostly because for 8D I had one of the words wrong, but was close enough to make me think it was right.

The pic will be messy as it has printed out really small and is covered in wee ads. I think if you really want you can click mine to make it bigger and then zoom about it. I had to take a picture of the grid and then zoom around the pic on my phone to see the numbers in the corners to be sure I was putting the right clue in the right spot. I was too impatient for the PDF version but it is up now.

For this we have to solve 28A and 16A then apply those to the long answers of 1D and 8D. It's all a bit gobbeldegooky until most of the cross letters are in and we make some guesses. I was on the right track with both but with a word off in each. For "I went out with Hitler?" I could see TOOTHBRUSH was the (10) but I thought it was creepy of LR to make us think about making out with Hitler and needing the MOUTHWASH as well. Only "MOUTH" wasn't fitting. For 1D I got the first word wrong which worked in my favour because I could see the right word to remove. 1D was "MANDATORY DRUG TESTING" and if we apply the 28A OINTMENT it'll remove the STING. Now I knew what to do with 8D and changed that to "TOOTHBRUSH MOUSTACHE" and taking a PAINKILLER will remove the ACHE.

The rest had some tricky wordplay, the LHS being tougher than the right. I really liked 14A, 13D and I swear I've seen 15A before. The NE corner was the toughest with 2D and 3D in last.

This was a great puzzle, I'm sad to think it wouldn't get into a newspaper. It was very satisfying to finish. I'll return the favour and suggest if you like LR's puzzle he does have a collection of puzzles on the Crossword Light by Stand Alone, inc. and can purchase bundles of 20 LR puzzles for a fiver. Cheaper than a month of newspaper subscriptions for puzzles that won't disappoint. (He doesn't even pay me to say that)

LR just said he's sharing another puzzle next Monday - huzzah!

Onward to DH and the second cuppa!