Solving time: a couple of hours, maybe a bit less.
Experienced Inquisitor solvers will know already that Eddie (from Eddie the Eagle, referring to the Indie masthead as well as the ski-jumper) is one of Mike Laws’s pseudonyms. As a quick bit of maths based on the preamble suggested, the phrase to be found in the extra letters in wordplay is: THOUSANDTH CROSSWORD IN OUR WEEKLY SERIES. I can remember tackling the first, and although I haven’t by any means solved the lot in between, this puzzle has provided lots of pleaure over the years.
This puzzle was a fairly straightforward one as a good chunk of the phrase was obvious vry quickly. I’d like to give a thumbs-up to the “( )” spaces provided after the clue numbers for writing the extra letters in, though on my copy I slipped into old habits and put most of them on the left of the clue number too.
On to the next thousand!
| 3 | G,LENo / O – leno = thin muslin-like fabric |
| 4 | HOuR,N.P.,OUT / U |
| 5 | sIMP,AIR / S |
| 10 | ARISTARCH = ‘severe critic’ must be answer, but I can’t see how to get (ARISTARCH+h) from “field locally set on church” |
| 13 | BEE,RoUP=pour out / O – beer-up = an Aussie boozing event |
| 15 | sEM(PI)RICAL / S – pi = ration in reclaims* |
| 18 | RAT=tar rev.,T,LINEr / R |
| 19 | S.C.,RATTLEd / D |
| 20 | PiA,CO / I – pia = a tropical plant, and a paco is an alpaca |
| 21 | NICAEAn / N – ae. = aetatis = aged, as in “aged 12”, inside ca, inside inn*. |
| 25 | SESELIw / W – SE in wiles rev. – “a plant of the genus Seseli of the Umbelliferae family”. No wonder the def. is just ‘plant’! |
| 31 | F,RATs |
| 34 | (w)AiF,FINE / I – affine (n.) = a relation, esp. by marriage. I vaguely remembered affine functions fom maths, so got this right for the wrong reason. |
| 35 | LA,LA=look twice,GEe = move to the right / E – you need to look in the ‘First Name’ part of C to find this “talkative woman”. |
| 36 | P.E.,(t)RIMEsTER / S |
Ref 10 – ARISH is a stubble field (defined under ARRISH) and TAR is a Shakesperian form of ‘to set on or incite’
I thought the most remarkable thing was that the diagram contained no crossing first letters, hence the ability to list the clues in straight numerical order. Most unusual!