Articles we spiked in "Thunderer" terribly written -- and lousy! (5,3,7)
I believe the answer is:
under the weather
'terribly written and lousy' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I cannot judge whether it can be defined by this definition.
'articles we spiked in thunderer' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'articles' could be 'athe' ('a' and 'the', indefinite and definite articles) and 'athe' is located in the answer.
'we' is present in the answer.
an anagram of 'thunderer' is 'underther' which is within the remaining letters.
This accounts for all the letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for under the weather that I've seen before include "Sickening" , "Seedy" , "not so good" , "Depressed" , "Out of sorts" .)