It was evident early on that this crossword was about Christmas (as those letters in circles soon told us). The word MEAN in various contexts appeared in the title and the preamble. SCROOGE? we wondered, but he has seven letters and before long CHIRGN was produced by the ‘mean’ of those clashing letters. The GRINCH.
We found these clues challenging, especially the wordplay ‘Brew PG tips for refreshingly hearty English tea drink (8, two words)’. THE GRAPE seemed to give the ‘drink’ but we couldn’t justify it at first until an anagram (“brew” of PG the tips of Refreshingly Hearty English and all of TEA seemed to work. 7d “What winds churn up in deserts (5)” was another head-scratcher though the answer DUNES was fully checked. Oops: puddings and wastelands… a lovely &lit with the very tricky wordplay of the N that winds “churn” up in DUES for “deserts”.
Ah, the drink! Well, we started with ASTI White Christmas’s final couplet spun it (4) (AS + IT<) and by clue 21 had ‘a drinking problem’. Later, there was nice spiced rum, and a ‘Last shot’. Clearly Lionheart retains his place in the Listener Setters Oenophiles. Cheers, Lionheart.
We had been told that we would be splitting the grid and I suspected that those seven answers that would solve the mean character’s problem would be giving us a Christmas tree but I had to go back to the story to find that the Grinch’s heart (which was previously two sizes two small) swelled threefold when he realised that Christmas means PERHAPS A LITTLE BIT MORE (than presents, wine and the like) and, of course those letters made real words when we, for example, changed TA[SK]ED to TA[PER]ED.
A nice three-for-two offer for the De-mean-ed Grinch! And Dash hopes Lionheart and all our fellow solvers will have had a good Christmas too.
Thank you Lionheart for what is clearly a date-related crossword.