Is this really only Alchemist’s second Listener crossword?
A neat little preamble explained why we had only twenty across and down clues. Each of those was to give us a misprint the corrections of which would ‘lead to’ the thematic work. (Yes, we understood ‘lead to’ and weren’t expecting those letters to spell a title.) We would identify a heavenly body and two people whose paths crossed and all the other clues (in addition to those two people) would be two clues run together.
Naturally, we began with those rather generous across and down clues and soon had the intriguing message ALL CLUED STARS IN ORDER. That initially told us nothing but those words already in the grid allowed us to place some of the clued pairs: PANTRY and TESTIFY, APHIDS and PROPANE, TULIP and UNREELS, STELLAR and SEVER, ROOTLET and ALTER (of course the given word-lengths helped so that soon we knew, for example that the only remaining 5;6 had to be AXING and ICEAXE). There was an extra 6;7 in addition to the clued seven and HAROLD/WILLIAM fitted very conveniently into that. Penny drop moment!
Co-solver Wiki tells me, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry depicts Halley’s Comet as an omen of impending doom just after the scene of Harold’s coronation. Specifically, it appears in the scene where Harold is being crowned King of England, with people reacting with fear and a messenger bringing news of the comet to Harold. The comet is positioned above the scene, and beneath Harold, ghostly ships hint at the Norman invasion to come.’
Of course, it now became clear that all I had to do was read those stars in the grid in order, and, not including the shared L of HAROLD and WILLIAM where their paths cross (cross-stitched into the tapestry, of course) I would find BAYEUX TAPESTRY. What a lovely compilation, Alchemist.
Does he retain his oenophile status? Of course: ‘Serving first drops of Pauillac’s Lafite hot off vine (8)’. The ‘serving’ was a PLATEFUL and we had to remove the H(ot)off ‘viLe’ or [H]ATEFUL after that PL. The Tennessee editor was ‘canned’ in one of those double clues and there was a ‘Dash into western alehouse for refresher’ putting RUSH into PUB< to give BRUSH-UP. Entertaining clues, thank you and “Cheers” Alchemist.