Saturday, October 7 2023, Alex Vratsanos

Hello all!  Put your hand up if the greeting "Happy Thanksgiving" means something to you today..It was a real treat to round out my blogging week with this tricky, almost-pangrammatical (all but 'J' - so close!) Saturday puzzle.  (Addendum : the last Saturday puzzle I blogged, back on September 9, also came within a 'J' of being a pangram.  Weird coincidence - or conspiracy??)

Things got off to a splendid start down the right side, with one of my favourite expressions - INTHEWEEDS ("Overwhelmed with details") - making an appearance, alongside the very clever ECHOLOCATE ("Sound off on?") .  By the time I reached the SE corner, I was feeling pretty smug, and that's when it caught up to me - I entered BARHOP instead of BENDER for "Pub crawl and then some", and, in a particularly forehead-slapping moment, ELM instead of YEW as the "material forVoldemort's wand and Robin Hood's bow".  Chaos!  But it all got straightened out, as "Written in it this clue is" *had* to be YODASPEAK.

By this point, with the right side mostly filled in and the left side still blank-ish, I was already thinking "pangram" and that helped, as the remaining answers were loaded with high-value Scrabble letters like Z, X and also Q.  My very favourite entry was the mystifying "Perfect square for the circumference of pie" (PIZZABOX).  I was hoping that the very first clue "Plot development with twists?" would be MAIZEMAZE - but it's HEDGEMAZE, as revealed by the crosser "Zero-emission aircraft" (GLIDERS).  The pluralization of this one made it trickier; it also triggered a walk down memory lane as I used to go gliding (or, "soaring") with my dad when I was a teenager.

So much great content here.  "Weaver's work" was just about my last one in.  I thought it was going to be something like BASKET or RATTAN, but no - ALIENS - brilliant!  Great fun on a Saturday morning.

With that, I shall leave you in Colum's more-than-capable hands.  "See" you in a few weeks!

-philbo