Hello all! Rounding out "my" blogging week is an excellent puzzle with a vaguely spiral layout and intersecting stacks of three long answers, Across and Down, right in the middle - always an impressive feat of construction! I actually did the solve last night but was too tired to do the writeup then and there, which is unfortunate as I've forgotten what my progression was. I think it was scattershot instead of top-to-bottom, as Saturday puzzles generally have to be. None of the big central clues jumped out immediately - I had to work inward from the corners to get a toehold in the middle. The first to fall was the Olympic sport introduced in 1988 - TABLETENNIS - which I definitely consider a real sport, having seen it played by people who really know what they're doing. If you don't fall into that category, you are required to call it PINGPONG... After that, "Yo-yos, in a way" revealed itself (WALKSTHEDOG), which was a nice "aha moment" as I was sure it was going to be something less literal, like VACILLATES. "We should get going" took me longer, as I was stuck on something resembling ITSGETTINGLATE. Right ballpark : ITSTHATTIME. By then, there was enough material that the rest of the centre fell into place.
I liked the appearance of TAGINE (Northwest African stew"), as it's a dish I make regularly for my family. There's a certain type of pot to make it in, but quite unnecessary. Very clever was "Acute ... or the opposite of acute" (GRAVE) - my favourite clue, I think. "War historian's tally" (DEATHS) was kind of morbid, especially in today's fraught geopolitical climate.. The SE corner caused me the most trouble, with the misleading "Take some hits" (SMOKEPOT) and also, "Part of a mic check", which I couldn't decide was TAP or the equally valid TWO (as in, "Testing, one, two...") Speaking of NITs, which I'm about to, "Appropriate word found scrambled in 'pedantic'" was a real reach IMO. But nearby, I liked TATS ("They get under one's skin, informally"). I guess they do get under one's skin - under the epidermal layer, at least. "Spring winds?" (COILS) was a top-notch, concise QMC. "Lemon or orange" (TREE) - nice misdirection, there. Oh - and I just now "got" the line after "On a cold winter's night that was so deep"!! NOELS - brilliant! Except I grew up knowing it as NOWELL..
And with that, I pass the torch to Colum. Hope you've had a good week, and "see" you in a few!
-philbo
I enjoyed it...except now I can't get "The First Noel" out of my mind! :-) Thanks for the week, Philbo!
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