i Cryptic Crossword 3543 Morph
June 16, 2022
Difficulty rating (out of five): 🌟🌟🌟
A bit of a tour de force from Morph this Thursday in the i, with too many standout clues and smiles along the journey to list. Highlights for me outside of the COD would include the cryptic definition at 14ac, the sound-alike at 26ac, the gender-neutral thriller at 5d, the quite delightful wordplay in both 3d and 15d, and the “Sabbath guitarist” that had nothing to do with Tony Lommi.
In other words, I enjoyed it.
The plate at 21ac gave me a few issues at the close, but elsewhere everything was entered fully understood, with 10ac a standout example of how to clue a pretty rare term.
The aforementioned COD? With many to pick from, I’ll go with 9d – “Heading for beach, I must change to new outfit (7,7)”.
All the answers and parsing of the clues can be found in Fifteensquared’s blog from May 2018:
https://www.fifteensquared.net/2018/05/31/independent-9869-by-morph/
Borodin
batarde
Saboteur
flashling
jonofwales
Cornick
sprouthater
uiytjhgmj
willow1235
idothei 
Finished at lunchtime. Yeah, I’d say three stars is about right today. LOI was 11ac.
Splendid stuff. So good.
Three-star time here, too, with no unknown vocab, and only one search needed, for CUIRASS, my last in. I did also check that ADUMBRATE meant what I thought it meant.
Absolutely loved that, and full agreement with all points above. Even the unknown “queer-ass” was such a good a homophone it was welcome too.
Brilliant stuff Morph.