As this puzzle was published, the run-up to Christmas 2024 and New Year 2025 was in full swing. This week and next would be the final hurdle for those so far all-correct to conquer before the year could be successfully navigated. Having been all-correct last year, 2024 has proved to be one of my less successful efforts, including Lionheart‘s last puzzle (no. 4822, Editor’s Cuts) back in June (I thought there was supposed to be a long queue for puzzles).
That puzzle required some jiggery-pokery with the completed grid and this would require something similar, but at least we were told so by the phrase “which will involve splitting the grid”. Only time would tell whether it was a straightforward split or not. Apart from six cells with clashes and an unknown number of non-word entries, this would be plain sailing!
Ah, but 4ac immediately told us that a 6-letter answer would need to fit into a 4-letter entry and TASKED was pencilled in, an anagram of skated. Of course, that followed 1ac with White Christmas’s final couplet spun it (4) for ASTI [(Christm)AS + IT<]. A scan ahead showed that quite a few clues had a festive twist so I wondered if the whole puzzle would be Christmassy.
The grid came together pretty quickly with some entertaining clues on the way. There was 4dn Brew PG Tips for refreshingly hearty English tea drink (8, two words) with its woefully non-alcoholic reading for THE GRAPE [(PG + R(efreshingly) H(earty) + E + TEA)*] and the somewhat political 26dn Begin rival’s crossword in the middle, with a bit entered backwards (5) for SADAT [(cros)S(word) + A + TAD<)], a reference to Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin and the Camp David Accords of 1978, somewhat topical with the recent death of Jimmy Carter. There was also the simple 31dn Ruler among three men from the East (5) for EMEER and the somewhat surprising brown bread for dead in 6dn!
All done, and CHRISTMAS was revealed in the circled cells and CHIRGN for the clashes. Even I could see that the latter arranged to give GRINCH, but it needed some Wiki-ing to see what the precise theme was. The book was, of course, How the Grinch stole Christmas! and described the mean-spirited Grinch whose heart was two sizes too small, hence the two letters dropped from the middle of seven across clues. In the end, all is well and it triples in size.
So the seven words needed to have three letters added to their middle to give new words. Using what Christmas means then got me stumped and I had to have a glass of 4dn to help. Which it didn’t! Nor did Chambers, my ODQ or Brewer’s. Luckily, albeit much later, I returned to the Wiki page for the book, read a bit further, and found that Christmas meant “a little bit more” and it didn’t take long to work out that “perhaps” could go in front to give new words TAPERED, RESHAPING, RESALES, SPLITTER, CELEBES, REMITMENT, SNORERS.
Great little puzzle Lionheart, thanks. Hopefully there will be another goody next week to round off the year. [Yes. Ed.]
As usual, your animated grid is impressive.