Caitríona

Tough, tough tough … 1 down: __ ss __ Had to be diss related? Only after sleeping on it, clearing the entire NW corner did GRAIL hove into view and GOSSIP was a proper bolt from the blue. My sister had a REX when she lived in Devon (but I think it was Cornish); I’m an ENGR and have seen all manner of abbreviations on org charts; RICIN was this can’t be true … but the interweb confirmed it; an Italian SPRITZ in Milano (great colleagues there). And then onto the fly specking: 43across AdET makes no sense - TIL there is an ice-cream company in the US called BREYERS and also one called dREYERS. Meh, meh, meh … when filling in the puzzle, I had figured youngsters spin all manners of things now, so SPINTHEs made sort of sense. I also assumed that an s-CAP was a particular type of bottle top. When the rebus suddenly came to me, I’m sure the bright light that flashed on over my head woke the cat. Tough, tough, tough but fair. And fun. Would repeat the experience if I could

Good puzzle. Guessed the Rubik connection early enough, which I was very pleased about. Tiny nit? Tony RYAN is the founder of Ryanair. I’ve never, ever heard it called anything polite except Ryanair (plenty of rude names for it, as it seems to go out of its way to be an extraordinarily churlish in dealing with its customers)

There were 23 popes who took the name John. I’m not sure if the wording of the clue is accurate?