Welcome back to Hotspur: we last met in 2013 when we explored James Murray’s ‘Web of Words’. This theme looks rather different …
The preamble was clear and concise. The puzzle “commemorates” the “infamous flight” the names of three participants (identified by extra letters in 16 clues) and their desitination to be highlighted. We won’t pretend that we twigged the theme immediately – but it didn’t take long to establish that it is the 75th anniversary of the defection of Burgess and Maclean, and it is their names and MOSCOW that appear in the grid, The clue message gave MISSING DIPLOMATS.
We feel rather awkward about “commemorating” the actions of the treacherous trio, but Hotspur has made a decent puzzle out of them, with the sort of well-balanced grid that is always attractive (and which coped well with the constraint that the perimeter imposes), and fair clues, though with rather less subterfuge than was used by the spies.
6a “Padding material plugged by My Possession novelist (6)” = [M]Y in BATT was a neat way of clueing the novelist’s name BYATT which the grid perhaps demanded; and “Highland burn’ as the definition of anothe constrained entry at 41a )the Scottish and to many unknown SCOWDER) opened the way up for a wordplay of “lighter colour over” (SCOW RED<) where SCOW is a pretty rare word for a flat-bottomed boat, giving a neat surface reading even if it was the sort of clue that we usually have to “back-solve”.
“Aniseed drink lacks special white wine (4)” (ASTI of course) conjured up a rather surprising bar order (we are probably out-of-date on our cocktails), but congratulations and cheers to Hotspur who remains a welcome member of the Oenophile Club.
This anniversary puzzle bumped the expected numerical to next week, which caused a bit of a flutter in the dovecote, but it’s not a big deal and those who like that sort of thing haven’t got long to wait.