This seems to be only Porlock’s second Listener crossword, though we have seen fifteen of his in the Magpie.
This week’s Numpty blogger didn’t find solving the clues too difficult but finding the clues earned a grumble with them listed in eight different sets and not even in clue order in six of those sets. It became even worse, in grouped clues (where we were given an indication of where to place dots) the wordplay would omit one letter, but in the two groups of across and down clues in their given order, we were going to find an extra letter that would spell something out for us. There was one letter to change, too and ‘elsewhere in the grid’ we would be highlighting a ‘six-cell block’.
Yes, that did soon spell the likely “CLUE FIRST LETTERS” but we had to put the other clues back into the conventional order to spell “ONLY DIFFERENT KINDS OF GOOD WEATHER … CRAG IN CENTRE”. Which Crag? Well, those letters in starred cells unjumbled to FRIARS CRAG and we know that there’s a RUSKIN memorial there (as well as the famous ‘Ruskin’s View’ at Kirkby Lonsdale just five miles from my home village – we used to be taken on walks to that from school). We had to change that one letter to show that literary figure (RUSKIN) and changing HOPES to HOKES did that. So FRIAR’S CRAG was the PLACE to enter below the grid.
It seems that that quotation about the ‘good weather’ is part of one about the water-colour painting of Copley Fielding, an artist Ruskin held in high esteem, but which painting? Were we highlighting the SHOWER or CASTLE Crag which stands next to Friar’s Crag on Derwent Water? The CASTLE Crag is the more convincing of the two.
Of course, there was a little red herring in Derwent Water. ?ONA. ‘Year stalking on island north of Skye’ was begging us to enter IONA but I’m not far away from Iona right now and it’s a long way south of Skye. The letters in the starred cells neded an R to spell FRIAR’S CRAG and, of course, RONA fits the bill.
I got right to the end of the clues, concerned that maybe Porlock hadn’t earned his admission to the Listener oenophiles, then there, in the last clue, ‘Ending of trade in US beer applied for (4)’ earned him his ticket (We put the E from ‘tradE’ into SUDS to produce the extra S we needed) – “Cheers, Porlock!”