| CODESWITCH | What a bilingual speaker may do in different situations...or a three-part theme hint |
| FINESSE | Delicacy and elegant skill in style or performance; subtlety and tact in handling/manipulating situations; or, a technique to win a trick in bridge (7) |
| WORSTOFBOTHWORLDS | *All the disadvantages of two different situations, and none of the advantages |
| ESL | Subj. for some hopeful bilingual speakers |
| DESERTRAT | What defectors do in different ways for old soldier (6,3) |
| SCAVENGE | What wild animals do in different caves around England (8) |
| FORTYNINERS | Old rush participants ... or a three-part hint to what can be found in this puzzle's grid or clues |
| PERFORMER | Entertainer, or a three- part hint to the shift behind "band perch", "Thor's hamper", "beg for Percy" and "what a bumper" |
| TRITE | Banal, or a three-part hint for the answers to the starred clues |
| STINGY | Penny-pinching ... or a three-part hint to two outer and two inner letters of each starred clue's answer |
| ORATORIO | Story set to music or a three-part composition about love (8) |
| RATTRAP | A net/snare for catching long-tailed mouse-like murids; a place of squalor; a horribly entangling situation; or, a bike pedal with teeth or a cage (3,4) |
| AMPLIFIER | What Speaker may require one's found in a politician and long-term inmate |
| TRIANGLE | Sonorous instrument struck with a beater to sound like a bell; a frame used in pool and snooker; or, a three-sided polygon (8) |
| TREFOIL | A plant such as clover, named for its triple leaves; or, a three-lobed form or ornament in heraldry or tracery, resembling one said shamrock (7) |
| LANECHANGE | Movement that may precede passing ... or a three-piece hint to the substitutions in this puzzle's seventh row? |
| DIGLOT | Translating as "double tongue", word used to refer to a bilingual book or a dual-language individual (6) |
| MINDTRANSFER | Hypothetical upload of a person's memories into another brain ... or a three-piece hint to the substitutions in this puzzle's third row? |
| HEARTOFDARKNESS | Novella by Joseph Conrad published as a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine in 1899 |
| CHORD | What a speaker may strike |
