It blows knight against officer on exposed rock (7)
I believe the answer is:
sirocco
'it blows' is the definition.
The definition suggests a singular noun which matches the answer.
'knight against officer on exposed rock' is the wordplay.
'knight' becomes 'sir' (a knight has the title Sir).
'against' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'officer' becomes 'co' (Commanding Officer abbreviation).
'on' says to put letters next to each other.
'exposed' means to look at the middle letters (outside letters removed).
The central letters of 'rock' are 'oc'.
'co' after 'oc' is 'occo'.
'sir' next to 'occo' is 'SIROCCO'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for sirocco that I've seen before include "Hot wind reaching Italy from Africa" , "A hot wind blowing from North Africa across the Mediterranean" , "a blow to Italy?" , "Hot south wind from North Africa" , "Hot wind blowing from north Africa to southern Europe" .)
