Having a touch of the quandongs

Good job I gave up blogging Daft Dot's Dilemmas this week 'cos I couldn't finish it unaided.
Ironic really as I got more feedback from not blogging than I usually do when so doing.

In desperation for answers/reasons-for-guesses, I had to go upstairs to ... {scary music} ... THE MAGUS.
Here's a summary of what The Enlightened One had to say.

5. HUSBAND. Apparently there's a meaning of this (as a verb): to save.
12. OBANG. This is a Japanese coin, though its dating is open to some dispute. A Japanese-speaking correspondent tells me it's a bad transliteration of a word that should be OBAN as there ain't no G-endings in Japanese. Try this: http://www.mint.go.jp/eng/plant/3rd_room.html. Or this: http://www.imes.boj.or.jp/cm/english_htmls/history_07.htm
13. QUANDONG. His Magusity tells me that Macquarie gives the def "country bumpkin". Now I look at Ramson (which I should have done all along), I find not only the tree (some varieties of which, but not all, are confined to rain forests) and the bumpkin but also: (1) "One who expoits or imposes upon another" and (2) the phrase "to have the quandongs" -- to be stupid. Apt in my case.