This is Dalibor’s puzzle for the Nottingham S&B.
‘Special instructions’: Some solvers may perhaps experience a déjà vu, but I wrote this crossword early this year, weeks before Methuselah’s absolutely brilliant pi- day puzzle was published in the Indy.
The ‘special instructions’ provide a hint to a theme in Dalibor’s crossword – it was not until we had filled the grid that we realised that the numbers from 1 to 9 are hidden in the entries, although 7 seems to be missing it’s first letter – so we’ve added it! In the Methuselah pi-day puzzle referred to by Dalibor, the across entries included the numerical figure for pi to several places of decimals.
Several new words for us – many thanks to Dalibor for submitting the puzzle.
It’s a great pity that Dalibor is unable to join us in Nottingham, but the good news is that he is on the road to recovery and has had a number of puzzles published in the Indy recently.
EIGHT (sports team) in (‘crushed by’) WINES (reds perhaps) + S (small)
Hidden in bARCelona
INFERno (Hell) missing (‘doesn’t need’) ‘no’
An anagram (”fighting’) of MANIAC and NEW
An anagram (”enraged’) of E (last or ‘ultimate’ letter of made) HITLER + NEW HIP (‘result of a major operation’)
I in or ‘stopping’ ELON (Musk, Donald Trump’s ally) – a new word for us. Elon doesn’t seem quite such an ally of Trump if you read his recent ‘rants’ on X.
KOaLA (bear) missing the middle letter or ‘disheartened’ – we had to check this
FOR (in favour of) round or ‘keeping’ U (university) + tIER (level) missing (less) ‘t’ (first letter or ‘start’ of testing)
An anagram (‘wild’) of FIRE round or ‘engulfing’ V (first letter or ‘capital’ of Venezuela)
Cryptic definition – the musical instrument and someone taking notes of a meeting etc
HONESt (frank) missing or ‘taking off’ ‘t’ (time) round or ‘acquiring’ an anagram (‘abandoned’) of FLAT
SIXTEen (square – 4×4) missing or ‘lacking’ en (space – in printing) – another new word for us
A homophone (‘listened to’) of NONE (nobody)
DATUM (piece of information) round E (English) SIDE (football team) R (‘reading?’ – one of ‘the three Rs’)
Double definition
IN (cool – trendy) FORMER (ex)
HOuSE (‘Lords possibly’ -as in the House of Lords) with the ‘u’ (unionist) replaced by R (right)
Apple products are prefixed with ‘I’ (i-phone, I-pad etc) so an Apple revolutionary movement (rising) might possibly be known as an I-RISING – a new word for us
stEINBECK (American writer) missing or ‘avoiding’ ‘st’ (street) – we had to check this one too
An anagram (‘oddly’) of BELARUS round or ‘inviting’ C (first letter or ‘head’ of China) round or ‘saving’ E (energy)
T (last letter of at) in or ‘admitted to’ A WOOD (golf club)
Double definition
I (current) uNITED (Manchester side) missing the first letter or ‘leaderless’ round or ‘engaging’ HER (that woman)
Cryptic definition – ‘flight’ as in ‘escape’
An anagram (‘messy’) of STY in or ‘tackled by’ DREAM (‘nightmare, say’)
An anagram (‘chaotic’) of EVAN PRESENTING
An anagram (‘about’) of COnFUSED missing the ‘n’ (name)
A F (fine) GHANa (country) missing the last letter or ‘mostly’
A reversal (‘towards the sky’) of NO LAVA (‘volcano apparently didn’t erupt’)
I’S (one’s) E (first letter or ‘beginning’ of enjoy) in RR (Rolls Royce – ‘luxury car’)
No déja vu here as I didn’t do Methuselah’s puzzle. And I didn’t spot the theme, but it was nevertheless an enjoyable challenge. Thanks, Dalibor, and best wishes for your continued recovery.
I missed the theme but enjoyed the crossword. LOI was 2d which was my clue of the day. Thanks Dalibor
Many thanks B&J for blogging my crossword.
And I hope you and everyone else had a lovely day!
Two things, however.
The T in ATWOOD is coming from [Margare]T. I would never use “at last” for that because in my Book of Crosswords that is wrong. The definition is just “Novelist”.
Also, “seven” is part of [PARENT]S EVEN[ING], so 19/13 as a whole.
Methuselah did exactly the same but that is/was really coincidence.
Always lovely to see a Dalibor puzzle. Did some of this as a small group solve – a few obscure solutions but all of them were fairly clued. One of the others saw the numbers before I did. Hope to see you again some day Sil.
I did not attend the event, but I wanted to try the Dalibor puzzle, having met Sil a couple of times at S&Bs a few years ago, and remembering also his frequent informative comments on the Guardian blogs, focusing on the precision and fairness (or otherwise) of clues.
This was a delightful puzzle, tricky in several places. Seeing FOUR, FIVE and TWO in the grid, I got the idea of the theme, and the missing SEVEN made me look (and think) again – and there it was! INFORMER was my second-last in and was my favourite clue – as Rob @2 also commented.
Thanks to Dalibor and Bertandjoyce.