Another puzzle from the queen of the female setters this week with another tunnel to grapple with. [A bit of tautology there. Ed.] The first was just over a year previously with the hungry caterpillar gnawing his way through the grid. In between, we had a date-related puzzle celebrating the discovery of the tomb of King Tut by Carnarvon and Carter.

Here we had extra letters, luckily only in the across clues, with the down clues being normal and then a list of things (37 cells) to be highlighted in the finished grid.

The first and last columns were both (13, two words) so I tried them first. 1 Dire as ectomorphic US insects and 10 Scratch others nastily in method of psychoanalytical analysis. Unfortunately, my knowledge of American insects failed to elicit CECROPIA MOTHS, and no amount of doodling got me RORSCHACH TEST, mainly because I had completely forgotten how he spelt his name!

Back to the acrosses, despite those extra letters, and the grid started coming together reasonably quickly. Fast forward to the end, and I saw that Chalicea tried to make out she was just a minor member of the Listener alcoholic lot with just DRAP and DRAM in the grid. All in all, a slightly tougher solve than I was expecting but nonetheless enjoyable.

The extra letters spelt out Read the ninth down clue letters and, doing as I was told, revealed The place, time and engineer. Knowing Chalicea’s admiration for the famous engineer, I soon found him in the grid — ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL in the shape of a tunnel entrance with SUNRISE and BOX TUNNEL in rows 9 and 2 respectively. This referred to the legend that the sun shines through the tunnel at sunrise on the day of Brunel’s birthday, 9^th April. Whether true or not it makes a nice story.

But back to Chalicea, and taking the date of her birthday, the down clues gave us an anagram of Listener Oenophile Member! As they say, confession is good for the soul.