Inquisitor 1254: ALIKE by Ferret

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Ferret’s only previous crossword in this series was 1213 earlier this year – Twenty blocks and twenty bars – and the rubric mentioned 90 degree symmetry. This time it was the more conventional 180 degree symmetry involved, but with a splendid twist which made this a most unusual grid. So thanks to Ferret for a very clever offering. The grid must have been very difficult to compile!

The rubric was quite complex, was critical to the puzzle’s completion, and is reproduced here in full:

Clues are in conventional order and lead to answers which are all alike. Four unclued across entries suggest how solvers must colour, or not, four alike squares; the unchecked letters in these entries are alike, forming part of a set. The other member of this set must be written thematically under the grid. All the unchecked letters signal what the theme word means. Numbers need not he entered, but all bars must be shown in the completed grid, which exhibits 180° symmetry. 

It rapidly became clear that all the answers were 6 letter words and that you actually had four separate 6×6 word squares to solve, rather than the conventional barred crossword, so the bars required divided the grid into four square quarters plus those between the letters in the four unclued down columns.

There were 20 down clues, which meant five for each square, so one of the down 6 letter blocks in each quarter had to be part of the “unchecked letters . . . forming part of a set”. Armed with this knowledge solving the clues proceeded at a reasonable rate and the unclued across clues appeared as ROUGED, ALBINO, BLANCH and RUSSET. The unchecked letters in these are respectively O, I, A and E. The other member of this set (of vowels) is U and this is to be written thematically below the grid.

The “unchecked” letters in the down columns formed the warning YOU ARE STANDING INTO DANGER – most sailors would recognise that as a flag signal, and the flag had to be composed of two red and two white squares. I had to look up the flag and found the information here.

The relevant flag is the U flag   and in the phonetic alphabet U is UNIFORM which is a synonym for ALIKE, the title of the puzzle.

So the Theme Word to be written under the grid is UNIFORM.

I hit a minor snag when I entered ENSIGN in the bottom left quadrant before realising that there were two successive across entries beginning with EN!

I was uncertain whether or not it was necessary to place bars between each letter of the unchecked letter phrase. I (Hi) would not have done, but Ho would. They are included in the diagrams.

Two diagrams are shown, The one on the left showing the colours and the warning, the one on the right being the puzzle as submitted.