The i Paper Cryptic Crossword 4838 by Rodriguez

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳⏳ High quality, high difficulty, for the second day in a row. Rodriguez isn t quite as hard as Nimrod, but he s getting there so perhaps four-and-a-half for difficulty would be called for today. Certainly there were a couple that were extremely hard to parse even after solving; I m thinking [ ]