You’ve had a DrTom holiday with some really good puzzles from other constructors, but your luck has run out. As usual, this came to me while doing another puzzle and thinking, “hey I’ll bet that could be a mechanism”. My testers (Wendy, Whimsy, Cinny) helped me hammer this into a useable form and pushed me back on track when I got lazy with cluing.
Difficulty, hmmm – well given what my testers went through it is definitely not a Kitten but I think the tip off to what is going on is pretty obvious so I’ll say it is a:
Kitten
***CALICO
Persian
Puma
Lion
Nudges, if required, will be Friday and solving deadline is Tuesday Noon.
NUDGES:
Nudge 1] 1A (always a position of importance) is a nudge clue!
Nudge 2] Clue 49D is also a nudge!
Nudge 3] The title, along with the meta prompt, are trying to get you to get your message across more clearly.
Nudge 4] That would be particularly important if you were a pilot or someone giving military coordinates wouldn't it?
REVEAL:
Nine theme entries were from the NATO Phonetic Alphabet:
PAPA
HOTEL
OSCAR
NOVEMBER
ECHO
TANGO
INDIA
CHARLIE
SIERRA
That formed the meta answer PHONETICS