24 October - Solution for the last clue and the next cryptic crossword clue

Duck taken from Grasmere cooked around noon (9)

Solution – merganser

Here we have an anagram to solve – the clue that it is an anagram is "cooked" – so the letters in "Grasmere" are scrambled up – but there are only 8 of them and the solution has 9.  Aha – those 8 letters are "around noon" ie around "n" standing for noon.

And when you do this scrambling around you can come up with "merganser" which is a sort of duck.

Today’s cryptic crossword clue – solution tomorrow

Company backed aggressive dog to take place (5)

Source of clue – NZ Herald


Hint - Find an abbreviation for company, reverse it and put a word meaning aggressive dog with it...