I had to look it up, too, as I’d never heard of a skua. But apparently it really is a bird.
Another one that’s common in crosswords. Clever clue for it. Personally I like to eat Oreos with oleo when I dispatch on my aviso.
But do you keep your Oreos in an etui? Personally, I prefer an olla, as you can fit more in it. And once the Oreos are gone, you can cook an olio in it.
Yeah, I do that all the time, too.
Beware the aa.
I would if only I knew how to spell it backwards.
Did you happen to notice the use of the qualifier “just about”? Also, your counter-example is almost fifty years old.
You apparently don’t read too many older cookbooks.
I’m waiting for a crossword to pick up BioTop’s word where the clue was ‘number’. 9 letters, five of them were vowels.
Enumerate?
One of the cleverest I’ve ever seen: (it was in a cryptic)
Initial repetition is only repetition after all (12 letters)
ALLITERATION
Good crossword word, but not a number. I’ll look for his thread later.
Of course it’s not a number. It’s a synonym for the verb “number”.
Sometimes I go for Toto myself.
My favorite dance is Adele Astaire.
Intelligence has nothing to do with cryptics. It is all about how well you bend your mind. I’m pretty good at ones written in the US but British ones are a challenge.
I got a book of large London Times ones (Sunday puzzle size) in Princeton, and I’ve worked about a month on the first five puzzles. I have them all more than half done which is almost victory. There is just enough local knowledge required to make them really difficult. OTOH, being from New York no doubt makes NY Times puzzles easier.
Maybe Ono can do the cooking… 
.
The auk is an arctic (or subarctic) bird and the skua is an antarctic bird (regularly flies over the south pole).
My favorite clue was:
A little lower?
calf
The one that drove me crazy when I first ran across it was ‘layer’.
__N
So simple in the end.
Yes, that works for my post, but I was referencingthis threadand a riddle from Biotop starting with post #24.