This is Vagans’ third Listener crossword and he appears regularly in the other thematic cryptic crosswords, the Magpie, IQ and EV, so we are troubled to learn in the preramble that he is suffering from ‘cognitive dissidence’. Cognitive WHAT? We read on and suspect that we are ‘having the monkey’ taken. Is the puzzle ripe (or rife) with clues whose answers have been affected … Do we have to ‘pass mustard’ … ‘tow the line …’? We are smiling before we even begin solving.

So we mix the G & Ts – ah the alcohol. Well we shared a bottle with Vagans at the Listener Setters’ Dinner less than a month ago, so I don’t really need to check that he qualifies for the Elite Oenophiles, but of course he does, ‘Spirit takes hold to start batting (4, two words)’. GO IN, we decide, but it is not easy to understand that wordplay until we have extracted an H as an extra letter (ultimately we opt for TO THE MANNER BORN – as HAMLET claimed he was in his discussion with Horatio of the excessive drinking habits of the Danish court – that comes out of those extra letters and – we know that Hamlet was not ‘To the manor born’) So we are left with (h)Old = O going into the GIN. Vagans also gives us ‘Finn concerned with Gabon’s purification process (6)’ An N came out of that to give us FIN IN G – Fining? That’s purefying and clarifying wine isn’t it? Cheese, Vagans! – Sorry “Cheers!”

There is a lot going on here! The preamble gave us a generous hint or two that we are going to misuse words in ways they are commonly misused (EGGCORNS for ACORNS the ODE tells us) and the comical errors fall thick and farced. Soon we have BASE/BASS, BOWL/BULL (what a fine triple definition clue ‘Papal’ editor’s male nonsense’) GAMBIT/GAMUT, CHEESE/CHASE, MUTE/MOOT, PAIL/PALE, BOLD/BALD, LAME/LAY, URGE/ERR, BEAR/BARE, WHIM/WING and GOAL/GOLD. I am reminded of a headmaster I worked with who used to insist that we had to ‘diffuse’ the issue that was about to confront us.

We still have all those extra words in other clues to find to confirm that we have spotted those eggcorns appropriately. Some leap out: Ploy for GAMBIT, Silent for MUTE, Hobbling for LAME, Can for PAIL, Fancy for WHIM, Dish for BOWL, Brave for BOLD, Teddy for BEAR, Encourage for URGE, but Counterfeit for DISH is tough to find and we are surprised by Fizzer for CHEESE (O.K. the fizzer, the Big Cheese – that’s a really obscure one).

We find EGGCORN in the ODE and in our grid. ‘A linguistic error in which part of a common expression is replaced by a similar-sounding word that the speaker believes to be both correct and logical, like ‘tow the line’, for ‘toe the line’. Nice one Vagans – good fun!