Stick Insect’s Purple Cow appeared in a Listener crossword just three months ago and that leads us to be very suspicious. To have another just three months later prompts us to conjecture that this one must be ‘date-related’ and we haven’t solved long before a few words that don’t fit their lights appear. COX, FORD, CARTER, SMITH, KING, DOLE. They provide an early ‘aha’ moment. But I am going too fast. I haven’t checked whether Stick Insect meets the oenophile requirements yet.

‘Rob the French charity no more (4)’ = DO LE. DOLE is one of our favourite wines. Originally from the Jura mountains it is now a speciality of the Swiss Valais region. But sadly I fear Stick Insect is referring to Bob Dole here, the ‘Second Out’ in the Bill Clinton electoral race.

‘Manufactured materials, lacking tellurium device to catch wine (7, two words)’ Now that’s more hopeful. A decanter, I suspect, but the other Numpty (the sailor/scientist) subtracts TE from an anagram of MATERIALS and announces that it’s a device to catch winD – a SAIL ARM. And we have another of our corrected misprints (which have already given us AMERICAN P…)

NUTMEG has appeared almost by itself as ‘Dali’s kid overturned stone cask (6)’ We upturned the GEM TUN so there wasn’t much hope of  wine there. This really had me head-scratching. I thought Gala was Salvador Dali’s ‘kiN. Stick Insect must really have been hunting for a misprint that would produce the N of PRESIDENTIAL (yes, we have guessed that and are ‘back-solving’). Fortunately The Big Red Book comes to my rescue. Dali n a tropical American tree related to nutmeg, yielding staves etc. and wax seeds [Native name].

I’m fearing that Stick Insect has to be relegated to the TT zone when we almost reach the end of the clues with a dismal alcohol drought. ‘Boer adult ejected from defensive ring (5)’ That’s a crossword favourite isn’t it? We remove the Adult from the LAAGER and get LAGER. All is well after all!” Cheers, Stick Insect!” We have to change our Boer to bEer.

That E also completes the message that has been emerging. PRESIDENTIAL RACE WINNERS NOT LOSERS. We were suspecting something of the sort, as our grid has produced HARDING, CARTER, MONROE, CLINTON, HOOVER, BUSH, POLK and clearly we need to insert next week’s winner in those five central cells. We needed Google to tell us who the remaining ‘Seconds Out’ were in those electoral races: GORE and CLAY, of course.

If we had a vote, I suspect that we would, like the US electorate, overwhelmingly vote for BIDEN. How can the US tolerate an antiquated electoral college system that allows a minority to potentially hold sway? Is that democracy? But this isn’t the place for a whinge. My small American granddaughter’s fifth birthday is on the election day and I believe she will grow up in a better world with a President who believes in a generous immigration policy and health care available for all. My vote is here!

Living overseas, we had to mail our crossword solution before it was all decided, but there wasn’t a lot of doubt in our minds and how we rejoiced when BIDEN had such a strong lead. I wonder whether any Listener solvers voted for the other fellow.