Wonderful places to retire before death, old and useless (10)

I believe the answer is:

stupendous

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'wonderful' is the definition.
(thesaurus)

'retire before death old and useless' is the wordplay.
'retire before' becomes 'stup' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'death' becomes 'end' (synonyms).
'old' becomes 'o' (common abbreviation eg in OE for Old English).
'and' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'useless' becomes 'us' (abbreviation for unserviceable).
'stup'+'end'+'o'+'us'='STUPENDOUS'

'places to' acts as a link.
I am not very happy about this link. Some or all of it may belong to another bit of the clue.

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(Other definitions for stupendous that I've seen before include "Astounding" , "Astoundingly huge" , "Phenomenal" , "Extremely impressive" .)

I've seen this clue in The Times.

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