With the very first clue "Beat at chess," I suspected a rebus or something, because "checkmate" didn't fit into the five allotted squares, but it was that old trick, the verb that doesn't add "ed" in the past tense used to clue one that does (MATED). Those get me a lot.
The trick, like the act of birding itself, is quite tame, if a little hard to describe. So they go out with binoculars and they just look for birds? Wait no, I mean... bird names are the answers, and the clues are amusing, imagined spoken words. As in:
"Nice of you to show up" (COMMONSNIPE)
"Hey, England, happy Fourth of July!" (AMERICANCROW)
"Say 'goodnight' Alexa." "Goodnight Alexa" (AMAZONPARROT)
and
"Bottom-of-the-barrel barrel prices! Buy today!" (COOPERSHAWK)
In other news, OBELI († symbols, on manuscripts) went right in thanks to my classical Latin study. (Is that too much of an AMERICANCROW?) And I learned that ITERATES means the same thing as "reiterates" from crossword puzzles. ("Inflammable means flammable?! What a country!")
And is it by design that there is a CAT sitting directly in the middle of this bird-filled grid? I doubt it.
- Horace
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