Wow – we have the honour of blogging a Morph puzzle on the last day of the year!
We always relish Morph’s puzzles for their topical themes and brilliant clues, but this really was a tour de force!
Initially, we thought that we could colour the grid with the topical solutions, but we then realised that every single clue or solution has a reference to one of the events from this extraordinary year, and that would effectively mean colouring in the entire grid!
Instead, we’ve indicated in green which events each clue or solution refer to in the parsing below.
A really brilliant puzzle to end the year on – many many thanks to Morph.
It will be strange not being able to see the New Year in with friends this evening, but there is real hope that next year will be better.
Happy New Year to all!
A homophone (‘picked up’) of FUR LOAD (consignment of mink perhaps) – a reference to the mink cull in Denmark, and to the furlough scheme
ZOO (noisy bunch) ALL (completely) round or ‘swamping’ MC (master of ceremonies – host) – a reference to the upsurge in the use of Zoom for meetings between people working from home
R (run) E (key, as in music) AGENT (worker) – a reference to testing and key workers
LIE (fake news) U (for all to see, as in the film classification) after MI (Michigan) + X (vote) – a reference to the American presidential election
An anagram of N (last letter or ‘close’ to Johnson) and HIRE (anagrind is ‘misfits’) + IN G (government) – a reference to Cummings wanting to hire misfits and weirdos
When pupils are in school they are IN a FORM – a reference to school closures during the pandemic
An anagram of WEAR VALID – anagrind is ‘order’ – a reference to the wearing of facial coverings
DO (play) RIC (an abbreviation of Richard) – Little Richard died this year
Y (unknown) T T (first letters or ‘heads’ of Test and Trace) IN (elected – member of ruling party) all reversed or ‘backed’ a reference to the Dido Harding and other friends of the government who had no experience of the roles they were being appointed to
TRUMP (loser) round or ‘full of’ I (ego) + HALf (50%) without the last letter or ‘short’ – another reference to the American presidential election
POT (plant container) round or ‘outside’ IV (four) + S (last or ‘final’ letter of seasons) – a reference to Giuliani’s press conference at the Four Seasons garden centre – never to be forgotten because of his hair dye
H (first letter or ‘glimmer’ of hope) in an anagram of MRNA and vAcCiNe without or ‘cutting’ the odd letters – anagrind is ‘new’ – a reference to vaccine development
N (north) A (America) R-RATE (speed of virus transmission) – another reference to the pandemic
DULL (matt) in SEA (the main) all reversed or ‘heading in the wrong direction’ – a reference to Matt Hancock
BEHIND (supporting) BARS (pubs) – a reference to the fate of the hospitality sector in the pandemic
FOR BIDEN (how the US voted) round or ‘encompassing’ D (first or ‘number one’ letter of Donald) – another reference to the American presidential election
bREACH (rupture) without or ‘withdrawing’ the ‘b’ (British) – a reference to Brexit
Double definition – another reference to Brexit
NOTE (observe) G (last or ‘latter’ letter of Harding) all reversed or ‘in the ascendant’ – another reference to Dido Harding
cerEMony (middle letters or ‘insiders’) M (mass) Y (last or ‘end’ letter of virtually) – a reference to the various award ceremonies that have taken place virtually
An anagram of OF EU NORTH – anagrind is ‘splintered’ – another reference to Brexit
A XI (eleven – ‘team’) in M M (two metres) – a reference to social distancing
C (first letter or ‘heading’ for Christmas) LAN (Local Area Network – computer network) – a reference to restrictions on family get-togethers at Christmas
Hidden in or ‘covered by’ sociAL DIstancing – a reference to shopping restrictions
An anagram of VARIANT (anagrind is ‘developed’) round or ‘involving’ I (international) + L (first or ‘primary’ letter of labs) – a reference to Covid treatments
An anagram of TEAS – a reference to the ‘Eat out to help out’ scheme
DOMinIC (Dominic Cummings) without ‘in’ + an anagram of LIED – anagrind is ‘outrageously’ – a reference to Cummings trips to Durham and Barnard Castle
An anagram of COLTON IS – anagrind is ‘toppled’ – a reference to the Black Lives Matter incident in Bristol
PANdemIC (‘Covid-19, say’) without ‘dem’ (democratic) – another reference to the pandemic
An anagram of pATEL without the first letter or ‘top’ – anagrind is ‘rampaging’ – a reference to Priti Patel’s bullying behaviour
First letters or ‘leaders’ of America, Belarus Are Cheating In – a reference to alleged cheating in elections involving Trump and Lukashenko
M (first letter or ‘lead’ to Marcus) E (last or ‘end’ letter in issue) + AID (support) reversed or ‘raised’ – a reference to Marcus Rashford’s school meals campaign
Hidden in onCE Democrat – a reference to Trump’s unwillingness to concede the presidential election
After finishing this, I thought I would refer to it as a “tour de force” and then you did this in your intro. It certainly was a corker as Eccles said yesterday. Brilliant blog too.
So many favourites. I’ll name: FURLOUGHED, DRAW A VEIL, ALLUDES, BEHIND BARS, MAXIM & ANTIVIRAL but so many others.
Thanks to Morph and Bertandjoyce.
What a splendid finish to the year! Far too many favourites to list them all.
Many thanks to Morph and B&J.
Happy New Year to everyone. Let’s hope 2021 is brighter for us all.
Sheer genius. I couldn’t possibly list favourites: the whole thing is a work of art.
Huge thanks to Morph for a brilliant end to the year and to (lucky, as crypticsue would say) B&J for a blog to match.
Happy New Year, everyone!
I am rapidly becoming a Morph fan. This was great
Thanks all and Happy New Year
What Eileen said @3
Happy New Year to Morph, Eileen, B&J and everyone else
Simply sublime from 1 to 31. If I was to take my lead from, and shamelessly plagiarise, the excellent blog and colour in my favourites, “that would effectively mean colouring in the entire grid!” Nothing more to say – for once!
Thanks Morph and B&J and HNY to all here.
Thanks to Morph and to B&J for the blog. I’ve reached a point in my life where my short-term memory isn’t what it once was, but I don’t recall having enjoyed or admired a puzzle as much as this during 2020 (and I’ve solved a few).
Happy new year to everyone in crosswordland
very good… nice end of crossword year at least.. hoping for a continuation in 2021
Thanks Morph n Bertandjoyce
The horror! The horror!
Still, there’s footie on the other channel.
Thanks Morph, B&J
What I loved about this was that it all appears so effortless, and yet you can tell the amount of work that’s gone in.
Thanks to Morph, BertandJoyce, and the very best for the coming year to one and all
Great way to end the year. A great achievement and a joy to solve too.
Thanks to Morph and B&J.
Happy New Year.
Thoroughly enjoyed this today. Favourite was Furloughed
Happy New Year to all
Thanks Morph and BertandJoyce.
Brilliant – didn’t help that I misread 1a as “consignment of MILK” and went with sounds like “lowed” as in the noise cows make 😉
FORBBIDDEN was brilliant and the surface of 23 made me laugh out loud
thanks to Morph for the entertainment, to B&J for the explanations of a few! And to everyone who compiles and blogs on the Independent, a tweet by Bluth a few weeks ago got me back into Cryptic Crosswords and it’s become my morning fun, and thanks to everyone on here I’m slowly getting better!
What can we add to all the superlative comments above? We’re in absolute agreement with them.
Thanks, Morph and B&J.
And best wishes to everyone for a Happy New Year and better things to come than in 2020.
It’s all been said – brilliant, especially the topical ones!
Just awesome! Thanks to Morph for a fabulous end to the year and to Bertandjoyce for the excellent blog, as ever.
Just one reference I was unaware of – the Four Seasons one. A truly remarkable achievement by Morph.
Happy New Year to everyone when it comes, and good riddance to 2020.
The puzzle of the year, in more ways than one.
Thanks to the lovely Morph and Bert and Joyce. Thanks too to everyone else who has contributed to our crosswording entertainment and illumination this year.
I wish everyone a vastly improved (dare I hope even good? – is that possible?) 2021. Love and hugs (e-hugs of course, guaranteed safe) to you all. xxx
What an incredible achievement. Not only has Morph incorporated events from 2020 into every clue, and avoided the bits-and-pieces clueing that often results from heavily themed puzzles, but he’s managed to present the more miserable events of this year in a delightfully humorous way.
I think it’s safe to say that next year has to be better than this one (it can’t be any worse!), but it’ll be a long time before we see a better puzzle than this in the Indy or anywhere else. Bravo, Morph, and HNY to all.
Allow me to add to the deserved applause for this. Finished at a steady pace but needed help to parse MILIEUX and INHERING, so particular thanks to B&J.
FORBIDDEN and MAXIM personal favourites today. At one point I thought we might be on for a pangram too, which would have been mind-blowing!
Broader but no less sincere thanks too to the Fifteensquared 9d: I was 1a for seven months this year and used some of my time wisely to get into cryptics. Without these excellent explanatory blogs I would still be flummoxed but now I’m pleased to be able to complete most of most days’ grids (some better, some worse naturally). Some day they may even take me less than ninety minutes…!
So a big thank you to all setters, bloggers and fellow commenters for a year of stimulation and enjoyment.
Here’s to a far better (surely) 2021.
A magnificent puzzle, thank you, Morph – incredible achievement to fit so much in with clues that read so smoothly – so it’s an ill wind that does not produce something good. Many thanks also to Bert and Joyce. Happy New Year to all.
Brilliant! As others have said, we had so many clues that were worthy of being favourites, and it’s a pity that we can’t mention them all. Having said that, FORBIDDEN was very clever, and using “mRNA vaccine” as anagram fodder in RANCHMAN was outstanding.
Thanks to Morph for bringing back so many memories, and to B+J for their blogs, today and through the year.
Another vote for this as a tour de force, and also to echo EggCustard @20 for the help fifteensquared has been this year as I’ve gone from occasional to daily solver, and even once or twice came close to solving a whole puzzle without needing the reveal button. (Hoping 2021 is the year I manage that!)
Thanks everyone, I’m glad to have been able to provide a little light relief at the end of this difficult year. And if I’m allowed a quick plug, my alter ego Mick Twister’s limerick review of the year is also available at twitmericks.com.
What an excellent way to say goodbye to what has been a dreadful year for all of us – well done indeed to our setter for putting his own humorous twist onto the milestones we’ve encountered along the way.
Impossible to isolate one favourite but my biggest ticks went to 1,13,15&31a plus 1d.
Many thanks to Morph (really sorry not to have a year-ender from you in the DT as well) and also to the lucky B&J who got to bring us today’s review. Here’s wishing the three of you all the best for a hopefully brighter New Year.
Thanks Morph for a lovely puzzle, and B&J for the blog. We both enjoyed this, especially the clever-themed clues.
To add to other commenters – cryptics is a love we’ve shared for a while, but this year has led to us jointly doing usually one a day together, though we are a thousand miles apart.
Happy new year to all!
What a work of art! I’m so glad that the Four Seasons Total Landscaping found its way in. People said that events like that would make satire redundant, but Morph has proved them wrong.
It says something for our resilience as human beings that we can find enjoyment in reminders of what can only be described as a tour de force of a year. A great pity that Morph had clearly compiled this before Johnson claimed that his trade and cooperation deal was “a cakeist treaty”; you really can’t make it up any more.
Congratulations to Morph for providing an entertaining diversion from what is looking like being a fairly quiet evening; and to B&J for a brilliantly executed blog. (Just a small doubt: wasn’t Giuliani’s hair dye malfunction on a different occasion? Never mind, it was still great to be reminded of the Four Seasons.) Oh, and thanks to Eileen for suggesting trying today’s Independent cryptic! It’s been a great party, thanks for having me.
Great puzzle–amazing surfaces and logical clues. Even the specifically UK references weren’t too much for this USian (“oven-ready” was the toughest but not too tough from the crossers).
In another puzzle I said that I was tired of hearing about a certain person but having him defined as “loser” is OK.
Superb. Many thanks to all and best wishes for a hopefully brighter new year.
(I think SH is right. The garden centre wasn’t the hair dye, it was the one that wasn’t a posh hotel but was next to a sex shop… who was saying something about not being able to make it up?)
Apologies from Joyce to Bert, sheffield hatter and DuncT. I was checking the blog and was convinced that that the hair dye happened at the Four Seasons so I amended the blog and did a quick check. However, I should have checked my googling a bit more carefully.
It was lovely though to be able to mention the hair dye though so I have no real regrets!
What does it matter??
I’ve had one glass of wine too many!
I messed up my name on my comment @32. The website is not now recognising my name – my fault, somehow, I’m sure – so I have to remember to enter it each time and sometimes I forget – as just now. I trust you know it was me, anyway!
Bertandjoyce @31 & Eileen (hic) @32. No, of course it doesn’t matter! (I did say ‘never mind’ when I raised the ‘small doubt’ @28.) And I share Joyce’s glee in being given an opportunity to mock someone who had been given more power than his apparently small merits deserved; the way these pathetic people thought so much about their hair!
Happy New Year to you all.
Great fun throughout — thank you to Morph, to Bertandjoyce for explaining the couple I hadn’t parsed, and to Knut for recommending the crossword.
For once I am glad to be late to the party and unlikely to be read, as I hate to be the lawyer who adds a minor quibble to an otherwise excellent offering, but “legally resident” in 18d does not quite sit right. If we’re speaking legally, residence and domicile are different things, easily confused as partially overlapping in meaning and effect. (Conceivably, this might refer to the fact that the meaning of “domicile” or its cognate in civil law jurisdictions is very close to the meaning of “residence” in common law jurisdictions, but that seems an unwieldy and not entirely satisfactory interpretation.) I would have left the law out of the definition in favour of either a looser or more precise adverb. “Commonly” would neatly fit both.
Thanks, Morph, B and J.