I found this quite hard as birds, along with trees, are not a strong point with me. I’d never heard of a 13, a 14 or a 16 but eventually got them from the wordplay and/or educated guessing.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | (EPIS[-o]DE)* – ESPIED |
| 5 | PL,OVER – the first thematic clue I got. |
| 8 | GUIL[-e],(MOTEL)* – GUILLEMOT |
| 12 | SCREE,CHOW,L |
| 13 | L in (THE SORT)* – a guess, once all the checking letters were in place, as THROSTLE was new to me. It’s a song thrush apparently. |
| 17 | hidden in “genERATOr” |
| 23 | KING – I think this must be right because of the K in 2d but I can’t see how the clue works. |
| 26 | PART,(DIRGE)* – PARTRIDGE |
| Down | |
| 2 | K in SIMMER |
| 4 | IM< in DOCILE |
| 5 | TR in PEEL |
| 6 | CROW in (DROVE)* – OVERCROWD |
| 7 | E,PI,TOME – I guess that PI is “pious”. |
| 8 | GETS,TH[EB-b]IRD – hesitantly filled this in because “contracts” for GETS wasn’t obvious at first, although now it’s as plain as day: you GET an illness if you contract it. |
| 10 | (DOGGE[-r]EL,A L[-i]NE)* – the hard part with this one was working out what was anagram fodder and what wasn’t. |
| 14 | STORMCOCK – another name for the mistle thrush apparently. Not sure about the wordplay, apart from “outcry” = STORM. |
| 18 | hidden in “hALLE GROup” |
| 20 | ARIA,END< – a reference to the Strauss opera Ariadne auf Naxos. |
| 24 | R in WEN – WEN means “an enormous congested city”. |
KING, I think comes from (swan)KING A little mystified by STORM COCK as it seems an R rather than a K is leaving ‘crock’ = pot, but it might be something else entirely. Enjoyable puzzle, as always from Mass.
Understand it now. R also is King = rex
I seem to be missing something: if 8dn is ‘gets the bird’ then how do all those references to 8dn refer simply to a bird?
They’re just link words – I think we’re to read the clues as (wordplay) gets the (definition)
That’s how I saw it, too, Michod.
Thanks, yes, that’s it, I hadn’t realised the whole expression fitted in to the clues. But I think they work best when it’s ‘8 Down’ at the end of the clue and the whole word is a bird. In clues like 2dn, it seems a bit of a stretch to have the definition of a bird as ‘Gets the bird’.