Another Saturday when Bluebird has coincided with my blogging duty, and that’s no bad thing.
Solving went quite well after I had wended my way through several cold-solve failures to something I could solve. That turned out to be 13a. And I thought Christmas only came once a year.
That crossed with the relatively gettable 5, 6 and 8, and I was off. 4, 7, 11 followed (is that a perfume? Or just a sum?) and suddenly a whole corner was done! Albeit a small one.
Others got solved around the board but it was barely half filled by the end of the first pass (each clue attempted at least once).
Second pass filled in roughly another half of the remain empty cells but at the end of that session I still had a splodge of emptiness in the bottom left-hand corner.
I my notes I wrote “stuck”.
What unstuck me was getting the wordplay for 30a – then the last few followed, nay “flew in”: 22d 22a 23 24.
So 24d had the ignominy of being the last one solved though in retrospect that clue cannot be considered difficult.
Favourite clue: 30 for the penny-drop moment when I twigged it.
Bluebird is known for including some kind of Nina. I cannot see anything. Thus I expect to be disabused in the comments.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | HAMLET |
Play in twisted tree sporting something on your head (6)
|
| ELM< in HAT | ||
| 4 | FRIENDLY |
Warm, new filling cooked with the last bits of special pastry (8)
|
| N[ew] inside FRIED (cooked), [specia]L [pastr]Y | ||
| 9 | LAUNCH PAD |
Countdown supporter‘s vigorous handclap taking in the final vowel (6,3)
|
| (HANDCLAP)* AInd: vigorous, around U (final vowel) | ||
| 11 | SNEAK |
Grass snake’s tail moved (5)
|
| Move the E of SNAKE (its tail) earlier in the word | ||
| 12 | HERB |
Self-driving car that is made to leave, leaves (4)
|
| HERBIE (self driving car) – I.E. (that is) | ||
| 13 | CHRISTMAS |
Stupidly rich, devoted man joins mother and sons for feast-day (9)
|
| (RICH)* AInd: Stupidly, ST (devoted man, saint) MA (mother) S[ons] First one in. |
||
| 15 | SNAPCHAT |
Application shown by a police constable in tin hat (8)
|
| A PC (a police constable) inside SN and HAT (tin & hat) | ||
| 17 | PLANT |
Schedule the closure of paint factory (5)
|
| PLAN (Schedule) [pain]T | ||
| 20 | DANCE |
Jig, shake and carouse without stopping (5)
|
| (AND)* AInd: shake, C[arous]E | ||
| 21 | HONEYDEW |
Melon that’s hard held up by weedy criminal (8)
|
| H[ard] ON (held up by) (WEEDY)* AInd: criminal | ||
| 22 | SPYMASTER |
My parse’s wrong, assuming 2’s first letter is M? (9)
|
| (MY PARSE’S)* AInd: wrong, around (assuming) T[wo] (2’s first letter) | ||
| 25 | PAST |
Last course of Italian meal is left unfinished (4)
|
| PAST[a] (Italian meal, unfinished) | ||
| 28 | OUNCE |
Snow leopard‘s attack quietly carried out (5)
|
| POUNCE (attack) – P (quiet) semi-&lit? | ||
| 29 | ABRUPTEST |
A British rugby union player’s opening try is most unexpected (9)
|
| A B[ritish] RU (Rugby Union) P[layer] (player’s opening) TEST (try) | ||
| 30 | YIELDING |
Admitting defeat, yankee fellow’s excused from playing cricket? (8)
|
| Y[ankee], FIELDING (playing cricket) -F (Fellow’s excused) | ||
| 31 | WRITER |
Columnist, say, who sets things straight on the radio (6)
|
| Homophone “Righter” (who sets things straight) Homophone Ind: on the radio | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | HOLY |
Virtuous, with passion, but no heart (4)
|
| HO[t]LY | ||
| 2 | MOUSE |
Something clicked with inspirational person, inspiring love (5)
|
| MUSE (inspirational person) around (inspiring) O (love) | ||
| 3 | ESCABECHE |
Taxi covered in melted cheese and spicy marinade (9)
|
| CAB (taxi) inside (covered in) (CHEESE)* AInd: melted.
I had to look this up to check Escabeche (wiki) |
||
| 5 | RADAR |
Mix the tips of asparagus, radish, radicchio and dried pulses (5)
|
| (ARRAD)* AInd: mix. ARRAD from first letters of Asparagus, Radish, Radicchio And Dried | ||
| 6 | EASES |
Each sufferer originally put on drugs gets better (5)
|
| EA[ch] S[ufferer] ES (drugs) | ||
| 7 | DREAMLAND |
Dozer’s head with fantastic realm inside? That’s it! (9)
|
| (REALM)* AInd: fantastic, making REAML, inside D[ozer] and AND (with) | ||
| 8 | YIKES |
Key is faulty I’m afraid (5)
|
| (KEY IS)* AInd: faulty. | ||
| 10 | PACMAN |
Mature boy holding up a boring PC game (6)
|
| MAN (Mature boy) underneath (holding up) A inside (boring) PC | ||
| 14 | USED |
The Independent editor is exhausted (4)
|
| US (The Independent) ED[itor] | ||
| 16 | ANNOYANCE |
Having dropped diamonds, Danny Ocean’s in a state of confusion and anger (9)
|
| ([d]ANNY OCEAN)* AInd: is in a state of confusion. | ||
| 17 | PIED PIPER |
Dutch cake decorator carrying baked product is a draw for kids (4,5)
|
| D[utch] PIPER (cake decorator) underneath (carrying) PIE (baked product) | ||
| 18 | TOWN |
Cowdenbeath perhaps to emerge victorious after losing one (4)
|
| TO W[i]N | ||
| 19 | HORROR |
The beginning or the end of Highlander? Or The Shining? (6)
|
| H[ighlander] OR [highlande]R OR | ||
| 22 | STORY |
Jesus repeatedly exposed political figure’s lie (5)
|
| [je]S[us] TORY (political figure)
Jesus exposed is [j]ESU[s], then that ESU exposed is [e]S[u] – so “repeatedly exposed” just leads to the middle 1 (or 2) letter(s) of any word |
||
| 23 | AHEAD |
I see star chopping out line in front (5)
|
| AH! (I see!) [l]EAD (star, chopping out L[ine]) | ||
| 24 | TRAIN |
Creative works put up in sequence (5)
|
| ART< (creative works, put up) IN Last one in. |
||
| 26 | SHEET |
The woman regularly went to get bed linen (5)
|
| SHE (the woman) [w]E[n]T | ||
| 27 | STIR |
Move location of screw (4)
|
| Double Def. |
Excellent puzzle, blog to match.
No real quibbles, though in 16(d), the [D]ANNY, rather signalled ANNOYANCE.
22(d), I admired ” repeatedly exposed”, a new device to me. Ditto, HORROR, just before it – very novel.
I was fixated that a CHRISTMAS PLANT would appear, but no; unless HOLLY with NOEL chimes with 1(d). If that works, I’ll be a monkey’s auntie!
Very enjoyable, thumbs up BB & BM
Smashing job. I do rather wonder if I have overlooked a theme – Bluebird often does them and is fond of hiding short words – birds, animals, trees – in his solutions but I can’t see any today. HERB, SNAPCHAT, SPYMASTER, PACMAN, PIED PIPER and TORY are my faves today.
Thanks both
Great fun. As the setter himself has said on Bluesky, there is a ghost theme.
My picks: LAUNCH PAD, HERB, SPYMASTER, OUNCE, DREAMLAND,
PIED PIPER and STORY.
WRITER
The def should include ‘say’, I think.
Thanks Bluebird and beermagnet.
Antoher enjoyable puzzle from Bluebird
I also can’t spot a theme – I assumed there would’ve been one today with it being the 4th July. Amoeba @3 mentioned a ghost theme and I remember PACMAN was an answer so I looked for the names of the ghosts in the game (Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde) but I couldn’t find them, so it’s not a literal ghost theme
HAMLET took me a while to get as I was trying to put a 2 letter word for/title of a play inside an anagram (twisted) of tree to get something on your head, but I couldn’t get it to work, so I thought about whether the def. was at the other end of the clue and it was
I’ve heard ESCABECHE mentioned on Masterchef but couldn’t remember what it was
Fave clues were LAUNCH PAD for the surface alluding to one of my fave quiz shows which I’ve watched for as long as I can remember, and SPYMASTER for alluding to clue 2 which does indeed begin with M but had nothing to do with it
Thanks Beermagnet and Bluebird
Now that Amoeba@3 and Jamie@5 have mentioned a “ghost” theme, I can see that several words are associated with ghosts: HOLY Ghost, Casper the FRIENDLY Ghost, ghost WRITER, ghost TOWN, ghost STORY, and more broadly, PACMAN, HORROR, SHEET, CHRISTMAS PAST, the SNAPCHAT logo, and perhaps RADAR? Others may see more! Enjoyed this as always – thanks Bluebird and beermagnet
KVa @ #4 You are correct WRITER has a definition by example – I have extended the underline across the “say”.
Universal*Rundle @ #6 Surely you have it! That’s plenty for a “Ghost” theme.
Thanks both. I had to ask AI to demonstrate PAST as a synonym of last, and it dutifully suggested ‘past few weeks’. Didn’t look for or spot the theme, but would add TRAIN and YIKES (A la Scooby’s mate Shaggy).
Thanks Bluebird for a very gentle but very good crossword. I had many favourites including CHRISTMAS, PAST, OUNCE, YIELDING, HOLY, YIKES, and TOWN (Why Cowenbeath of all the towns on the planet?) I didn’t know the second definition of STIR but all else made sense. I didn’t spot the theme but that’s not unusual for me. Thanks Beermagnet for the blog.
… and there’s Hamlet’s dead dad as well …
TS@9 – maybe the world cup prompted Bluebird to reference the Blue Brazil.
Thanks DuncT. I thought the clue might have something to do with a sporting event beyond my ken.
[Tony Santucci @9: I think Cowdenbeath is relatively local to our setter]
PostMark @13: Good to know.