SV

Disappointed with the use of ISR as an answer given its current war crimes, including deliberate massacre of paramedics and ongoing bombing of children.

Spent a solid hour on this one on a plane ride but couldn’t quite crack it without checking - had one big error (HOWCANIrefuse at 25A) and that ruined chances of figuring out 9D (didn’t help that intersecting 22D and 30A were not names I knew!) Still, a very enjoyable grid - loved PIGEONHOLE as an entry and the clue for CLONES was clever!

Oh boy, that was a tough one! The north east gave away fairly early on as I knew SHAKSHUKA (delicious!!) and the clue for AUDIOTOUR was fairly generous. That gave me a foothold to slowly inch my way through the bottom quadrants and was pretty stoked to finally figure out LOSERPAYS and SALEPRICE. Finally gave up after making no progress in the north-west corner - I only knew FACTORIAL there, eventually got INTER and could otherwise only think of hungTOATEE - so was never going to be able to parse the ADLAI/ISLES/ISR/NOELS grouping. Didn’t help that Animal Farm is one of those classics I somehow never read! Oh well, gave it a good go but still only on 1 Saturday gold star for the year

Delightful puzzle with almost no obscure trivia and some lovely clues (especially liked the ones for FEMALE and ORS)! Was able to suss out the trick after getting the revealer but still needed to think for a while on some of the themed answers.