Solving time: 7:17
When I first printed this off I thought I must be missing a preamble, but in fact the asterisks in some clues (those starred below) acted as definitions of ‘stars’ in various contexts, such as film stars, astral stars and even an asterisk itself in 20dn. I found most of the puzzle pretty straightforward, but the top right took me a little longer. There are some very good clues including a couple of fantastic anagrams but I thought a few of the surface readings let this down a bit.
Music of the day: There have been a few songs called ‘Stars’ but I’ll go for this one by The Cranberries.
* = anagram.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | R + A + TRACE |
| 5 | RECLAIM; E.C. (= ‘Community’) in R,L (= ‘opposite directions’) + AIM (= ‘seek’) |
| 9 | MA(MB)O – ‘red’ as in communist, hence Chairman Mao. |
| 10 | BE(GIN)NIN + G – I thought the definition here was going to be ‘guerrilla leader’ so I left it until I had a few checking letters. Strictly something like ‘leader or guerrillas’ is needed to indicate ‘G’, and the surface reading is a bit forced too. |
| 11 | VERTEBRAL; VERT + [tre]E + BRA[nch] + L |
| 12 | TEENY; T + rev. of NEE + Y – another dodgy surface reading here. |
| 13 | [f]LYING – ‘wing’ in the sense of one of the outer letters. |
| * 15 | AL(DEBAR)AN – the brightest star in the constellation ‘Taurus’. |
| 18 | CHEONGSAM; (HAS COME)* around N.G. |
| 19 | [l]EASES |
| 21 | NADIR; (AIR + D[epressio]N)* |
| 23 | JAM + B.A. + LAY + A – not a word I knew. This is something like paella, and apparently is from the same root as ‘jambon’ (French for ham, and I think the Spanish is similar). Here’s a recipe from Delia, and another from the BBC. |
| 25 | PUNCTILIO; (UNPOLITIC)* – brilliant anagram. |
| 26 | SMACK (2 defs) |
| 27 | SOBERLY; SLY around (O.B.E. + R) – writing in an initial ‘F’ (for ‘fly’, rather than ‘sly’) didn’t help here. |
| 28 | EDA[m] + CITY – the mighty Leicester City making an appearance. |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | REMOVAL; (MORE)* + VAL |
| * 2 | TO M + CRUISE (= ‘to run smoothly’) |
| 3 | ALO(N)E |
| 4 | EMBARRASS; BARRA in (MESS)* – Barra is a tiny island in the Outer Hebrides. |
| * 5 | RIGEL; rev. of IR, + GEL (= ‘setter’, i.e. something that sets things) – the bright blue-tinged star in the bottom right of the constellation Orion. |
| 6 | CON + STABLE; semi-&lit – clever. |
| 7 | A (= ‘First to attack’) + LIVE (= ‘be’) – as in the quick and the dead. |
| * 8 | MEG RYAN; (GERMANY)* – another brilliant anagram and an apposite complement to Tom Cruise, with whom Meg Ryan starred in Top Gun. |
| 14 | GENERATOR; ERATO in GENR[e] |
| * 16 | DEMI MOORE (hidden backwards) |
| 17 | RAS TAFARI; I after (rev. of TSAR, + AFAR) – ‘this one’ meaning ‘this emperor’. |
| * 18 | CANOPUS – I only vaguely knew this so was surprised to learn that it’s the second brightest star in the sky after Sirius, then understood why it wasn’t familiar: it’s not visible north of latitude 37 degrees north, which includes all of Europe. |
| * 20 | STAR KEY – very nice. Richard Starkey was the real name of Ringo Starr, drummer with The Beatles. |
| * 22 | DENEB; rev. of BEND around E – a star in the constellation Cygnus, the swan, which I confess I have no idea how to find in the sky. |
| 23 | JOLLY (2 defs) – a jolly is a Royal Marine in crosswords. |
| 24 | AT SEA (2 defs) |
Your comment sounded a bit patronising to me but never mind. I thought hackles were raised rather than roused.
are you aware what the word condescending means mister f?
Stiofain_x
Fletch did not use the word ‘condescending’ but ‘patronising’. Whatever, let’s keep the comments relevant to the puzzle otherwise I will have to dispatch them to Tartarus (see Discussion Policy).
I agree that this way of treating a theme and its interconnections was very elegant. Though I must confess to being a huge fan of Araucaria.