There have been many GREAT LEADERS in history…and some not-so-great ones at present… Who could Vismut be referring to in this puzzle?
The preamble states that:
“Pairs of across clues are run together, always in the correct order. In one of the pairs, the wordplay leads to thematic entries but their definitions suggest GREAT LEADERS which must be written under the grid. In all other pairs, the last character of the leading clue and the first character following it indicate what solvers must draw eight lines through. By drawing a diagonal line through each of four non-thematic cells, solvers must connect the partnerships. Note that an anglicised name is used for one of the partners. Chambers (2016) is recommended.”
Fairly complicated, and worth a re-read or two…at least the paired clues are always in the correct order, and there don’t seem to be any extra/omitted letters in wordplay, or other familiar EV devices.
I chose to start off with the Down clues, to see if I could generate some crossers to help with the Acrosses, and their splits. Which I did…but not a lot.
Then I attacked the Across clues, and managed a few, noticing there were several numerics in the clues, and adding a few ‘/’s as dividers.
Things continued in this vein until I had an almost full grid, but couldn’t explain the first two Across clues’ wordplay vs definitions. And eventually realised that these are probably the two referred to in the long-forgotten preamble. The wordplay had to be CROOKE and BOND, but that meant the definitions were ‘language’ and ‘pastors’.
A little wiki-oogling of CROOKE and BOND took me on a long journey of discovery to finally work things out. Muriel CROOKE and Rosamund BOND trained the first four British ‘Guide Dogs for the Blind’, back in 1931. These dogs were JUDY, FLASH, FOLLY and META – who all appear in Across rows. It took a bit more e-research to find that these four were allocated to four blind WW1 veterans: Allen CALDWELL with Flash, GW LAMB with Meta, Musgrave FRANKLAND with Judy and Thomas RHYS with Folly:
[I am presuming this picture is out of copyright, given the time frames involved, but will remove it if advised otherwise]
These four gentlemen all appear in Down columns. So far so good – very educational, lots of thematic material – but it took a while for the last few PDMs.
- I finally twigged what those two rogue definitions were: ‘language’ = GERMAN; ‘pastors’ = SHEPHERDS – giving the dogs’ breed and the required phrase under the grid
- The ‘connecting’/adjoining letters between the Across clues’ halves gave: 1S T4 TO GU ID EW W1 VE TE RA NS (FIRST FOUR TO GUIDE WW1 VETERANS)
- The diagonal lines are effectively ‘leads’ connecting the upright men with their horizontal canine partners!
Wow – that tips the chapeau to an incredible feat of grid engineering to manoeuvre all that thematic material AND maintain symmetry:
(I couldn’t work out how to add lines to the PD grid utility, so I have tried to indicate things with colours, but submissions should have had lines.)
It must have been convenient to find two of those surnames as an author and a chemist, to allow them their own clues, and the others are cleverly hidden in plain sight. I couldn’t work out where the EE of ‘seeds’ in 14D SESAME SEEDS came from – hopefully someone will provide an explanation below.
Much kudos to Vismut for an amazingly creative, educational and challenging puzzle – a fascinating subject and a brilliant execution to bring it to such a visual representation.
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Indication Letters | Solutions | Clues (separated by ‘/’, definitions underlined)
Logic/Parsing |
|
| 1 | CROOKE / BOND | & 7 Criminal electronic language / regularly browned off pastors (6; 4)
CROOK (criminal) + E (electronic) / regular letters of BrOwNeD taken off, leaving BOND [language = GERMAN; pastors = SHEPHERDS – great leaders, or guide dogs!] |
||
| 10 | 1 S | HEMORRHAGE / LYSSA | & 11 Blood loss from American horse, agree to be treated with hormone, but not 1 / shot slays disease (10; 5)
H (horse, from e.g. Brake Horse Power, BHP, or from horse = heroin = H?) + subtractive anagram, i.e. to be treated, of AGREE HORM( |
|
| 12 | T 4 | HAUTEUR / DSOS | & 13 Arrogance of number exiting local about to regret / 4th of tiddly drunkards scratching tense cattle (7; 4)
HAU( |
|
| 16 | T O | ENTENTE / WEARS | & 17 2 cardinals cycling Spain in friendly agreement, / out of change, Walter lugs exhibits (7; 5)
ENT+ENT (two TENs, cardinal numbers, each cycling front letter to back) + E Espana, Spain) / W( |
|
| 18 | G U | Q-KELT / FOLLY | & 20 Perhaps IOM’s race speaker has limits of quick zone, bachelor’s missing / unknown lines of flipping stupidity (5; 5)
Q_K (limits, or outer letters, of QuicK) + ( |
|
| 22 | I D | EOAN / LALITA | & 23 About dawn in Borneo a Naomi, / darling girl, left a drunk Australian (4; 6)
hidden word in ‘bornEO A Naomi’ / L (left) + A + LIT (drunk) + A (Australian) [I can’t really explain ‘darling’ – best I can see is that LALITA is a Hindu/Sanskrit name meaning beautiful/amorous – which I guess could segue to ‘darling’…] |
|
| 26 | E W | NARNIA / READ | & 27 All round a pub welcoming artists in Aslan’s Place, / wickedly dear to register (6; 4)
A + IN_N (pub) around (welcoming0 RA (Royal Academy, artists) = AINRAN, all put round to give NARNIA / anag, i.e. wickedly, of DEAR |
|
| 28 | W 1 | LADES / FLASH | & 29 Millstreams in Perth having depth in channels regardless of new / 1 leaving swimmer outside of lane in regional pool (5; 5)
LA( [a ‘lade’ being a Scottish millstream, i.e. in Perth; and ‘flash’ having a second definition in Chambers as dialect, or regional, for a pool] |
|
| 30 | V E | TEAED / DECIMES | & 31 Took a brew deviate blended before losing Italy v / English, caught blocking passes and tackling Mark before European’s change (5; 7)
TEAED, subtractive anag, i.e. blended, of DE( [decimes being old coins, worth 1/10th of a franc, so change, in Europe] |
|
| 32 | T E | JUDY / TEREBRA | & 33 Handy character‘s yen to follow sport cut short / egg deliverer‘s return of cap to gunners 4; 7)
JUD( [Judy as in ‘Punch and Judy’, glove puppets, so ‘handy character’!] |
|
| 34 | R A | TEREK / DISEASEFUL | & 37 Note about king sandpiper, / ailing a lot once I used false remedies (5; 10)
TE (note, in sol-fa notation) + RE (about) + K (king, chess notation) / anag, i.e. remedies, of I USED FALSE |
|
| 38 | N S | PSST / METALS | & 39 Cry for attention by section hiding first of argon / salt alloys behind Mechanical Engineer’s brass and copper possibly (4; 6)
P( |
|
| Down | ||||
| Clue No | Solutions | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/Parsing |
||
| 1 | CALDWELL | Georgian author, still live, drops mike (8)
CAL( [American author Erskine Caldwell, born in Georgia, USA] |
||
| 2 | RHY | Half of poems in Spenser’s grain (3)
RHY( |
||
| 3 | OMS | Even bits of cosmos make sacred syllables (3)
even letters of ‘cOsMoS’ |
||
| 4 | KOANS | Put up correct answer for Zen’s unanswerable questions (5)
KO (OK, correct, put up) + ANS (answer) |
||
| 5 | FRANKLAND | French joint contracted with chemist (9)
FR (French) + ANKL( [Sir Edward Frankland, English chemist] |
||
| 6 | SHUTEYE | On the Beach author has rather abrupt nap (7)
SHUTE (Nevil Shute, author of ‘On the Beach’) + YE( |
||
| 7 | BATELEURS | Eagles flap wings, lures broken (9)
BATE (falconry, flap wings impatiently) + LEURS (anag, i.e. broken, of LURES) |
||
| 8 | NEUTRALIZED | Have occasion for hosting fussy ritual Zulu made ineffective (11)
NE_ED (have occasion for) around (hosting) UTRALI (anag, i.e. fussy, of RITUAL) + Z (zulu, phonetic alphabet) |
||
| 9 | DOREEN | Likewise Scottish eyes seducing Romeo’s woman (6)
DO (ditto, likewise) + R (Romeo, phonetic alphabet) + EEN (eyes, Scottish) |
||
| 14 | SESAME SEEDS | Notices entertaining endless identical delta sierra oil producers (11,2 words)
SE_ES (notices) around (entertaining) SAM( |
||
| 15 | OAKLEAF | Bumpkin gathers curly kale and a piece of foliage (7)
OA_F (bumpkin) around (gathering) KLEA (anag, i.e. curly, of KALE) |
||
| 19 | TONNEAU | Car cover‘s not rocketing by university with insurance essentially taken out (7)
TON (not, going up, or rocketing) + NEA( |
||
| 20 | FIDDLIEST | Most tricky instrument keeping one stumped (9)
FIDDL_E (instrument) around (keeping) I (one), plus ST (stumped, cricket notation) |
||
| 21 | LAMASERAI | Aerial broadcast includes brief service in Tibetan monastery (9)
LA_ERAI (anag, i.e. broadcast, of AERIAL) around (including) MAS( |
||
| 24 | VANDYKES | Transport colours, including pink at the back, for beards (8)
VAN (transport) + DY_ES (colours) around (including) K (back letter of pinK) |
||
| 25 | CLAMBER | Canine and German scientist nearly struggle up (7)
C (canine, dentistry) + LAMBER( |
||
| 27 | REDTOP | Tabloid‘s bent grass in Alaska (6)
double defn. – a REDTOP can be a tabloid newspaper; and REDTOP can be an American bent grass, hence ‘in Alaska’ |
||
| 30 | TUTEE | Student‘s expression of disapproval on one of the phone companies (5)
TUT (expression of disapproval) + EE (a UK mobile phone company) |
||
| 35 | EFT | Top and tail muscular old lizard (3)
( |
||
| 36 | ELL | Trimmed trade measure of length (3)
( |
||
14d – not SEES but SEESEE, I thought.
It’s always interesting to find out how solvers have tackled the puzzle and if it is in the way it was intended to go. I think most compilers find any sort of feedback helpful for future puzzles, so many thanks for your comprehensive blog mc_rapper67.
Kcit@1: agreed.
I filled the grid without too much difficulty but got nowhere with the endgame. Now that mc_rapper67 has explained it I’m not altogether surprised by my failure to make progress. I did try a bit of googling based on Crooke and Bond but clearly don’t have mc’s stamina.
I really enjoyed the puzzle, though it is only now that I see the significance of the first two Across entries! I got the theme from the ‘language’ and ‘pastors’ and ‘guide’ in the message. It was a very well-crafted puzzle where all the strands came together very nicely – and I did like the look of the final grid with its harness connections.
Mc-rapper67, thanks for the blog. You had a fair bit of ground to cover, but you did that in an exemplary fashion.
A top notch puzzle: challenging but not too difficult and a very interesting topic. I don’t think there is ever an EV of the year contest but this would have been right up there if there was. It took me a very long time to work out that ‘GERMAN SHEPHERDS’ was the required phrase – I had written GUIDE DOGS originally but that didn’t feel quite right. Thanks mc_rapper for noting the vertical/horizontal illustration of men/dogs, that particular element had passed me by.
Many thanks to Vismut.
Thanks for the comments so far – particularly to Vismut for your kind words, and Kcit for explaining what I had missed in 14D.
Kippax at #5 – I forgot to mention that I also wrote ‘GUIDE DOGS’ under the grid, before realising the significance of the definitions in 1A/7A.
I filled the grid and enjoyed it, but then failed to get very far with the end game. I was a bit thrown by the first for WWI veterans bit as my googling suggested there had been many dogs for veterans both in the UK and in other countries, years before these. But then I am hopeless at wordsearch endgames anyway, so it does not take much to defeat me.
Thanks to Vismut and MC.