Crossword Genius

Accept nurses consume whiskey in very sticky period (8)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

heatwave

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'very sticky period' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I cannot judge whether it can be defined by this definition.

'accept nurses consume whiskey in' is the wordplay.
'accept nurses' becomes 'have' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'consume' becomes 'eat' (eating is a kind of consuming).
'whiskey' becomes 'W' (phonetic alphabet: alpha, bravo, charlie etc.).
'in' is an insertion indicator.
'eat'+'w'='eatw'
'have' placed around 'eatw' is 'HEATWAVE'.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for heatwave that I've seen before include "unusually warm spell" , "Torrid spell" , "Torrid time" .)

I've seen this clue in The Guardian.
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