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Thanks and welcome to Brockwell, a new Guardian setter AFAICT, for this week's Prize.

The puzzle is "to mark a 50th anniversary". I think I know the anniversary in question (being old enough to have attended a rally on the inaugural one 🤣), but don't see many obvious references in the grid, nor a Nina. Perhaps I'm missing some thing(s).

Wide range of clues: quite a few relatively easy entries, but also a lot of nice wordplay and several entries I really enjoyed. Perhaps a bit easier than the median Prize level, but fun. Had to consult Google to verify two answers, though wordplay was clear. One somewhat Pauline clue.

FOI 1d, LOI 15.
COD tie between two clear standouts, the numerical clues (27, 13) and 5. Struggled with them but was delighted when the pennies dropped. 6 and 15 also very strong, with six others on the long COD list.

Curious about how other solvers found this puzzle. I'm always apprehensive about new setters, fearing difficulty getting on the "wavelength".

Apologies, I miscalculated. In fact I have no idea what anniversary is being marked! 😳

There are several fairly explicit references to the anniversary in the clues, eg 19a, 3d and 22d

Hi Geeker,

Like you I struggled to immediately see which anniversary was being celebrated but soon twigged when I came across Peter Tosh and Bob Marley though, aside from the clues, I can't find any references to him in the answers - maybe I'm missing something.

FOI was 30a followed by the crossing 26d.

Not too difficult but there are still three I haven't fully parsed, namely 15d where I can see "particular" but not the rest and Chambers doesn't seem to agree on the definition and then 6d and 3d, although I note that 2 of these are in your COD's so look forward to the PDM:-)

COD - I'm going with 2d purely because I was in the mood for a laugh:-)

Thanks to Brockwell for an interesting puzzle.

Aahh, just "twigged" 6d - very good:-)

Brendan

The "falling down completely" is a common device to indicate moving a letter to the end.

Got it, thanks Buzzybee, I'd mistakenly assumed "particular" only applied to the first 5 letters, although still not convinced by the definition, especially as the clue suggests a noun but the answer is an adjective:-)

In fact noticed 23d is the most direct reference to the anniversary

Apologies, I meant 23d as a clue I hadn't parsed not 3d.

Dont think so. The word before the letter shift is an adjective, but becomes a plural noun after it