The title didn’t really tell us anything though, when we had completed our solve and spotted ALBRECHT DÜRER in the Knight’s moves, I did think that maybe the wonderful Dürer HARE was a graven image. After all, there was a hare of the Poat kind sneaking into the clues. ‘FrencH ARE leading vice trial as before (5)’ We opted for ES + SAY (vOice for vice as an added letter) and I looked up the iconic hare, to find, sadly, that he was water colour and not a graven image..

Naturally I looked for Alcohol in Phi’s clues too and found “Glasgow’s dray and vat not fully visible in the smoke there (6)’. By this time, we had realised that some words were being entered in reverse in the first four columns and that almost all of the remaining clues in those columns had a word reversed (except KNIGHT – leading us to our ultimate knight’s moves – I know Phi and Sabre have set together as Phibre – is the Sabre knight’s move virus catching?) That KNIGHT was of course the word that was in the wrong set and prompted us that we had to follow ‘a principle befitting the first element of the title’.

Here we reversed DRAY, giving YARD and decided that the VAT was a KIE[R}, giving us REEKIE – Glasgow’s smoke. Well – a whole vat! Cheers Phi!

AGAR, SEDNA, IN ON, MART and RECCOS all reversed so we had one of our alterations. I found working out the other two more difficult as I could never remember whether I was adding or subtracting a letter and just when I thought we had sorted it out, a word seemed to be in the wrong set. DEARTH had a letter missing and was entered as DEATH when we thought it ought to be gaining a letter. Then 9d led us to LIVED (‘Was volume reduced in song (5)’. V in LIED). However our grid required DEVIL, so that gave us our third word that had moved into the wrong set.

And there was our hint. Knight, Death and the Devil – a Graven Image by Albrecht Dürer. And we were able to fill in the missing letters, completing his name in Knight’s moves. A nicely thematic conclusion. Thank you Phi.