Today’s Three tortures

Writing up the whole thing is a time-drain I no longer want to endure on a Saturday, but what I can do for you (you lucky people) is show the three clues which took me longest to get, from today’s Guardian prize crossword https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/prize/29446#20-across

17ac: Note missing cash once next to tense shopkeeper (7)

well, with the letters I had in place, it had to be FLORIST – but why? Here’s why: “florins” used to be cash. With a note (n) missing, that becomes “floris”; put it next to ‘t’ for tense. Ugh. Note that ‘t’ is acceptable since it is used as an abbreviaton for ‘tense’ in certain literary contexts – e.g. marking an essay or draft to note that a verb is in the wrong tense.

20ac: Near the end, ignored tricky clue – but this one transports you (8)

It’s TRICYCLE, because that transports you. But also it’s “TRICKY CLUE’ when you ignore the letters near the end of each word (highlighted).

8ac: Exams proposal (take them infrequently) leads to lecturer’s dismay (5)

It’s APPAL, meaning dismay. The cryptic part is not that difficult, but it is a rare form of the ‘missing regular letters’ type of clue, which usually takes every second letter. In this case, the ‘take them infrequently’ is telling us to take every third letter of EXAMS PROPOSAL, giving us APPA, and that takes us up to (leads to) ‘L’ for lecturer. Dismay, indeed.

What have we learned?

This setter, who goes by the sobriquet ‘Soup’, seems to stack most of the difficulty into their across clues. I guess they are too burned out to make it difficult when they get to the down clues.