It seems that this is Sage’s very first Listener compilation. He (or she) has just had one previous B-level crossword in the Magpie.
It has been an absolute joy to solve with no irritating jumbles or odd gimmicks, just gentle clues. Even those misprints, that were in ‘Most clues’ were not disruptive enough to slow down the solve.
The theme came into view very early on when ??M?? at the bottom left could no longer be CAMUS or HOMER. ‘Roper-in’ suggested ROMEO and before long we could see that those across corrected misprints, with spaces between words, were spelling that oh-so-well-known quotation ‘IT IS THE EAST AND JULIET IS THE SUN’.
What we had to do didn’t appear quite so quickly ‘HIGHLIGHT ESSES AND LOVERS’ but that produced a lovely child-like drawing of the sun in the east of our grid and resolved the one gap in mine. I simply couldn’t decide whether BUSTLED, HUSTLED or RUSTLED solved that clue ‘Elbowed way into joint breaking rule’ (which needed to produce a misprinted D). However, JULIET IS THE SUN – so a J went into that word and there she was. Lovely. And now I find that JUSTLE is in Chambers (a version of JOSTLE) with the definition ‘Elbow’. I learn something new with every Listener puzzle.
One thing left to do. I have to find the ‘Envious moon’ (the four other down clues’ initials spelled that out) and ‘black it out’. What a shame to have to remove that charming new moon that has appeared up in the left hand corner of the grid! The following lines of Romeo’s adoring words tell her to ‘Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon’, so the poor moon had to go.Well, I shaded it black.
There were those ‘four other across clues, the wordplay leads to the answer (entered normally) altered in one of two thematic ways’. That took a bit of teasing out! The four special across clues are 15a where the wordplay gives JUDDJ but the J(uliet)s become S(un)s and 39a ALTERJ > ALTERS; then 38a where IT in the wordplay’s LIT becomes E, and 41a where UTIT (initial letters) becomes UTE – IT is the EAST and Juliet is the Sun.
One thing left to do – do we admit Sage to the elite Listener setters’ oenophiles? Of course we do with such a delightful debut.
‘Drink seller succeeded in trades again, gave us a U misprint for JULIET, so this seller (who RESELLS) had to be drUnk. (Hmmm, better watch the alcohol intake!)
Then we had ‘Aged wine’s yours – lovely not posh’. We needed the I of highlIght, there, so the wine ‘yours’ had to be ‘lively’ or anagrammed and the U (posh) had to go, giving us ROSY, an aged word for the wine. You are supposed to drink that pink stuff young, but with the current heat waves, it’s a fine choice, even ‘aged’ so “Cheers! Sage. We will really look forward to your next one.