Crossword roundup: Why are blue moons getting more frequent?

The news in clues

When Gaff came along to one of our Meet the Setter sessions, we learned more about his approach to the themed puzzle and why “[f]inding out about swan upping on the Thames is interesting; researching the major rivers of Guatemala is not”. From Gaff, we expect a theme – and for it to be topical.

So, the solver may have wondered when tackling his puzzle in last week’s FT, what is topical about entries like ...

6d/15ac No way for Navy to demand sunshine without first dodging storm (5,2,1,5,2,7)
[ anagram of “for navy to demand sunshine” without the first letter of “dodging” ]
[ anagram of FORNAVYTOEMANDSUNSHINE ]

... NEVER IN A MONTH OF SUNDAYS, and ...

4d/22ac Highly unlikely it could be Simba in the distance (7,2,3)
[ allusive description of Simba, inside a unit of distance ]
[ LION TOON, inside MILE ]

... MILLION TO ONE? The light dawned (or, rather, dusked) at three down:

3d Rarely heard solitary miscreant on display tonight (4,2,1,4,4)
[ soundalike for “solitary miscreant” + something on display last Friday ]
[ soundalike for “one sinner” + “blue moon” ]

Yes, Gaff is a setter who combines the superpowers of Old Moore, Whitaker and Nostradamus and was able to give solvers a little reminder of what would be appearing in the sky once they’d finished solving.

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Latter patter

You don’t need to know what a blue moon is to enjoy its appearance, either in the firmament or in a grid. We know from the phrase Gaff demanded of us – ONCE IN A BLUE MOON – that it’s not a common kind of moon, but how uncommon it is depends on who you’re asking.

And these “extra” full moons are not as rare as they used to be. Back in 1937, an entry in the Maine Farmers’ Almanac had it that there were “seven Blue Moons in a Lunar Cycle of 19 years”, which would mean they only came up in February, May, August, and November.

But in 1946, a contributor to Sky & Telescope magazine misunderstood what the almanac was saying, and accidentally redefined the blue ones ...

This second in a month, so I interpret it, was called Blue Moon.

... with the implication that a blue moon could happen in any month except February. This meaning stuck around for a while until it was consolidated by a question in the Genus II edition of Trivial Pursuit:

Q: What’s the second full moon in a month called?
A: A blue moon

As a generation played the same questions over and again, learning the 6,000 facts and fallacies on the cards, “blue moon” effectively came to mean what Trivial Pursuit said it did. Meanwhile, the astrological term “supermoon” has left its esoteric origins for starring roles in headlines, and last Friday’s was both, which took its rarity value back up a notch.

The original Trivial Pursuit set also familiarised its players with some words which were new to most. After a month of rainy Sundays, a regular player would learn how to offer, with affected tentativeness, the suggestion that a fear of the number 13 might be referred to as TRISKAIDEKAPHOBIA, not to mention (in too much detail) the subject of our next challenge.

Reader, how would you clue POLYORCHID?

Clueing competition

Thanks for your clues for SNARKY. I didn’t expect to be imagining the decapitation of marine life, but there it was, plausibly, in alberyalbery’s “Like a hammerhead maybe, swap hammer head for narwhal head, one becomes crabby”. I could say something similar about yungylek’s epic “Before real numbers to 1,000 are plotted on the vertical axis, to begin with, statisticians need arithmetic mean”.

A smile was raised by hectorthebat’s “Stevie Nicks attacks R Kelly’s ‘yucky’ lead singles – bitchy!”, and harlobarlo’s “Bordering on sin, amateur knavery is hurtful” gave us all something to ponder, though I’m not entirely sure what.

I had trouble parsing the “about” in cmiall’s “Critical assessment of disheartened Alan Connor after point about TV producer”, but I spent some happy time contemplating the imagery of a disconsolate me.

And I was glad to see Carroll making a more deserved cameo in Neijygof’s “Like a Lewis Carroll figure, scurried through the looking glass into the wild blue yonder”.

The runners-up are steveran’s “It gets windy around entrance to railway cutting” and ID2155366’s “Tart hangs around northern chippy”; the winner is ousgg’s brilliantly effective “Cutting grass in small yard”.

Clue of the Fortnight

The back-to-front kind of clue, where the setter finds the wordplay in the words of the answer rather than those of the clue itself, needs to be deployed seldom and judiciously. Rorschach showed how it should be done in an Independent puzzle where we looked through the looking glass ...

12ac I’ve killed a lot of people, haven’t I? (4,3,8)
[ how “haven’t I” might be cryptically indicated ]

... and saw IVAN THE TERRIBLE. Terribly lovely.