Mini crossword No 264

I’m curious to hear how long this took to solve (along of course w/ anything else you’d care to share). Thank you!

9 mins with a few mistakes along the way (I used Check Word). Neat concept!

Thanks tpg for a creative mini that went in fairly quickly after I got 3d, my FOI. 4a and 1d faves.

Got there eventually, but took a long time and lots of googling, notably for 1a and 2d. Also, stupidly, I didn't initially notice your (clear) reference to "a certain letter". Nice, thanks!

24 hours! Looked at it, ran away, came back a day later and found my way in through 4a. A jewel of a crossie! Thanks tpg.

Well you know I love me some Shenanigans 😁 this was fun, and not so tricksy after I'd got 1d and 3d. 2d is new to me (and everyone else, it seems 😆) Thanks!

Hi tpgrammar, saw your bluesky post about this one so came expecting some trickery but the special instructions were clear enough that it didn't take too long to get into it. I did however start on the wing foot with 1d thinking to remove the S for a more familiar word that must likely be the name of a band somewhere or other! Fortunately 3d was clear enough to make the error obvious and from there it fell into place. Cheers!

The shenanigan was fine. Took a while (and some checking) though, because the two regionally-specific bits of vocab were completely unknown to me.