Struggling this week on these last three- "Rubs out the phonetic spelling of 'vehicles'" S - A - S (Scars?, Scabs?) Can't see the logic in either. "To a lesser degree? Wrong!" N - T - - and crossing with that one- "A hollow ring is evident in the word 'copse'" - R - - - E I just can't think of anything for that, and I'm pretty sure of the letters given!
Yes, could be GROOVE...good answer. In which case the preceding one would have O as its last letter
"To a lesser degree? Wrong!" N - T - O
Even discounting the letter T, a possibity, it's baffling me.
Further thought-
Although this clue "To a lesser degree? Wrong!" N - T - O claims to be 5 letters, they have made errors in the past, and if it was (3,2) the answer could be NOT SO, which makes a bit more sense, I think!
Nor me, beejay. I guess it'll be NOT SO. While I have my tea (mushroom soup) I'll ponder on the remaining
"Rubs out the phonetic spelling of 'vehicles'" S - A - S
Thanks for the groovy answer somewhere up there!
The 'Rubs out...' one is SLAYS (rubs out in the slang sense of 'kills', sounds like 'sleighs').
My only thought for the other one (but it is only a thought, I'm not at all convinced) is NETTO, a rarely-used (in English anyway) variant of NETT or NET, as in 'net price').
Yes, SLAYS is good. Not sure about NETTO, as the second part of the clue "To a lesser degree? Wrong!" doesn't seem to fit. NETTO isn't wrong, or am I missing something?
True, and how they manage to solve it in Bangalore I have no idea. (It also appears weekly in The Deccan Herald, though sometime later- anyway they're up to number 2863)