Woo-hoo! I actually managed to complete Araucaria's Saturday Guardian outing unaided this week! Not much to brag about by the standards here, but quite an achievement for me. There were definitely a couple of weak clues, including one of those "girls" rab was just complaining about and what seemed to me a very dodgy thing about drifts, shelves and breakfasts. Happy bunny all the same :)

[matt] Wow! I think I've only ever got a single Arucaria. Once. We are not worthy, etc.

Well the reason you're all making such a song & dance about the ION of POSITION is that it isn't ION(ESCU) ... you're all ignoring the "back" NO.1 back = ION, and I think No.1 is a reasonable leader.

BTW I wouldn't dream of using Ion Iliescu, the Romanian leader in such a context without at least pointing to the country, for as rab says such clues are wildly unfair. I also agree about some of the other vague letter clues - one of the most annoying being "notes" for any of the letters A,B,C,D,E,F,G - If that's allowable (and it generally is) then you might as well allow "letters" and have all 26 !

[Blob] Fair do's. It was a practice worth highlighting, even if it transpired that you weren't guilty, your honour. But "note" is a single choice of 8. Unless you start including the tonic sol-fa I guess... so although I think this should probably be frowned upon, I would say that if you have less than about a dozen choices you're doing ok. However "boy" expands to a list that spans about 20 pages in my Crossword dictionary and should be banned.