Solution to Sirius

I hope you found it fun to be with this puzzle for a while. The solution is in this image. Clue explainers are in the following video, and then a couple of other notes are after that.


I was quite pleased to find the anagram in 9A, but surely someone must have done it before. Likewise 3D. I wonder how many people are more familiar with the playwright than the creature in 23D – I’d at least heard of the former. This is a crossword I wrote with no particular outlet in mind, and with a couple of not-very-imaginative-for-me ninas in there – FORTY TWO and MARVIN (the paranoid anDROID[s] – “Your PLASTIC PAL[aces] who’s fun to be with”, according to the SIRIUS Cybernetics Corporation). You can also find VOGON(S) POETRY, and the B-Ark captain’s BATH[e] in there. I trust you had fun with it, but if not, I’ll just go and sit in the corner and RUST. If this was all your sort of thing, then I expect you’ll find Kevin Jon Davies’ book of great interest.

Note: One solver said he was “Sceptical of “have” as the connector (“[solution] have [wordplay]”)” in 7D. Looking back at it now, sometime after I wrote it, I think I must have thought that since both [definition] and [solution] were plural words, it worked in both surface and cryptic grammar. Now I’m not sure. Hmmm. And now I also see that I could have flipped it round to be an offer of hospitality…
Tea in South Australia with a bit of sugar, fellers?
…which would have avoided the issue entirely, and added a question mark to the slightly jokey definition. Hindsight is great, huh? Anyone have any thoughts about whether “have” is justified here? Leave a comment!

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