Maybe stag recruits engineer and doctor for festive time (8)
I believe the answer is:
december
'festive time' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both related to time as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I can't see?
'maybe stag recruits engineer and doctor' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'engineer' could be 'ce' (abbreviation for civil engineer) and 'ce' is found in the answer.
'doctor' could be 'mb' (Bachelor of Medicine, Medicinae Baccalaureus) and 'mb' is present in the answer.
'stag' could be 'deer' (I've seen this in another clue) and 'deer' is located in the remaining letters.
This accounts for all the letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
'for' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for december that I've seen before include "Last month" , "Original tenth month" , "Tenth month to the old Romans" , "12th month" , "Winter month" .)