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December Cocktail: Naked and Famous Solution

32 of you solved the December Cocktail puzzle,Naked and Famous, with 21 solving the original puzzle within a week without any help. Congratulations to all! Below is the solved grid and an explanation of the final answer. A full solution, including cryptic solutions to every clue, is available for download on my Patreon page. If you haven't joined, sign up at https://www.patreon.com/negronis_cocktails, which will also give you access to future puzzles. The next Cocktail will launch on Saturday, February 14, at 4pm Eastern.

Cheers!

Negroni

Eight clues contain a word whose "clothes", or first and last letter, need to be removed before solving (e.g. NintendO in 16A). The removed letters, in clue order, spell NOT CHECKED ATTIRE. In addition, seven answers need to be "clothed", i.e. have a letter added to the front and back before entry into the grid. The altered entries are all famous people with a single name, and are shown with blue background in the grid. The unchecked added letters (red in the grid) spell IN CLUES, which tells you to look at the clues for the unclothed celebrities. The "clothes", or first and last letters, from these clues, form a chain (something circular, as hinted in 39A), as follows (the first item is arbitrary, but is the only one that gives an answer): MA -> AD -> DO -> ON -> NN -> NA -> AM, suggesting the final answer, MADONNA, another single name celebrity, and one who has been both naked and famous.

About Me

My name is Martin Reinfried, and in some circles, I am known as Negroni. I have been writing puzzles for a long time, both for work and for fun, and I have always been enamored of cryptic crosswords, especially variety cryptics. I have written several variety cryptics, some for fun, some appearing in the MIT Mystery Hunt, and some published in the National Puzzlers League's Enigma magazine. Most of the variety cryptics I have written can be accessed at negroni.fun/puzzles. I am a software engineer, and I have been a co-founder of a couple of companies, including Shinteki, where I wrote a mobile app to run puzzle-based events. I live in Telluride, CO with my wife Dennise and son Max, and I look forward to providing you with a steady stream of variety cryptic puzzles.