Toughie No 3561 by Weatherman
Hints and tips by Whybird
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
BD Rating – Difficulty **/*** – Enjoyment *****
Greetings from the Wirral. Well, the Slavonian Grebe decided it wasn’t going to hang around for a windy weekend, but the blow brought decent numbers of Leach’s Petrel and assorted other seabird goodies to the North Wirral coast. Quite how a bird no bigger than a blackbird survives out in the open ocean always amazes me.
Moving on from the wonders of the natural world, we have a wonder of the cruciverbal kind today. Weatherman has given us an absolute cracker, with lots of elegant surfaces and a lashings of deception and misdirection. I didn’t find it too hard, although I’ve added an extra half-star for the time it took to dig out some of the parsings. There’s a healthy dose of science today, too, which played into my stronger suit. There are so many wonderful surfaces, I’m spoilt for choice (3d, 6d, 8d, 22a in particular) but my prize goes to 1d, closely followed by 16a and 31a.
Thank you, Weatherman, for a wonderful puzzle.
Please leave a comment telling us how you fared and what you liked about the puzzle.