A neat preamble promises an interesting puzzle, from a new setter Horntail.
Moving letters in ten clues point to a song title, and correction to misprints in the rest provide (A) a description of a craft designed by 9d (unclued), (B) a thematic element and a pair of items. Once the grid is filled we are to apply the song title to a diagonally-connected set of nine cells to provide a replacement for (B) and highlight that, a ten-cell rectangle respresenting a structure and an entry representing (A) in motion – and then add (C) appopriately positioned next to (B) to depict a climactic moment. That’s a lot to keep track of, but is clearly presented and offers the sort of pictorial experience that many solvers enjoy. Not bad at all for a new setter – if more experienced hands are not hiding behind the new moniker.
The clues were fair and fairly easy too without being a walkover. This half of Dash uses moving letter sometimes and knows that they are not the simplest to construct especially if both the before and the after read well (I’m keener on the latter than many others are): kudos to Horntail for making a pretty good fist of it. They are also not always the easiest to solve either, so for reference this was your blogger’s best shot as to what was going on – remember that it is the first letter of the word receiving the mover that spells out the song title not the movers themselves.
| 5a | B | Twin | busT |
| 14a | A | seAt | aA |
| 19a | C | Train | comeT |
| 28a | K | sTeamy | karaT |
| 2d | I | casTes | indicT |
| 4d | N | goT | noTes |
| 5d | T | toileT | tinT |
| 8d | I | Taxing | isleTs |
| 24d | M | tesT | meTal |
| 27d | E | Travelled | eTons |
With the grid filled, the next job was to establish, understand and solve the messages and instructions. The craft (A) turned out to be a CONVERTED CAR, the element PLUTONIUM, and the pair of items CLOCK HANDS. 9d became DOC BROWN, and we were in the world of the film Back to the Future (in which the song BACK IN TIME features) where the Doc used plutonium to power a DE LOREAN (in motion in 18d OLEANDER) so that it could time travel, and then (having travelled to pre-plutonium era) used LIGHTNING striking a COURT HOUSE (and stopping the clock at 10:04) as a replacement power source to get the car home – so the CLOCK HANDS had to be added to the O above the COURT HOUSE and set to the appropriate time.
The other half of the Dash team was distracted for some time by the appearance of PLUTO – was this going to be a planetry thing or some sort of Disney dog? But then the converted car and clock hands brought back to mind the film the two sons loved (and grandson is now being introduced to as apparently it is soon to disappear from Netflix). It’s the complex situation poor Marty gets into when his seventeen-year-old mother falls for him and the way he can adjust his world through his time travelling that gives power to the plot.
The highlighting nearly caught us out. Not DOC BROWN but yes to OLEANDER (which was however not to be changed to DE LOREAN. Then there was the LIGHTNING. Only one of the possible paths works by reversing the order of INT[ime] and it leaves real words which though not required, are good practice, so that’s what we went for.
Well, if that was a debut it was a very good one – and either way warm thanks to Horntail, who offers us ‘tea before noon’ but does slip in some ‘punch’ and clearly has an ‘optic’ and ‘special rosés’ behind the bar so welcome to the Listener Oenophile Club too.