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Concerned with sea horse eating starter from Italy? Rice, maybe (8)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

maritime

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'concerned with sea horse' is the definition.
The answer and definition are not the same part of speech. However, adjectives and past participle verbs can occasionally mean the same thing.

'eating starter from italy? rice maybe' is the wordplay.
'eating' indicates putting letters inside.
'starter from' suggests taking the first letters.
'rice' becomes 'Tim' (Sir Tim Rice).
'maybe' becomes 'mare' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
The first letter of 'italy' is 'i'.
'i'+'tim'='itim'
'itim' put into 'mare' is 'MARITIME'.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for maritime that I've seen before include "Found near the sea" , "beside the sea" , "Naval" , "Concerned with the main" , "Coastal" .)

I've seen this clue in The Guardian.
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