I’ll be away when this blog is published, so won’t be responding for about a week.
“In 14 overlong answers, two letters must be entered in one cell; in 20 other clues, the definition has a misprint and the correct letters give a message. The final grid will have one empty cell.” This is eXternal‘s second puzzle in this series, and I reckon it was a pretty tough one …
Progress was v-e-r-y slow: I managed FRORN, BOOM, & REZ as down answers in the lower half, which led to EMBEZZLEMENT across the bottom, followed by PUB Quiz then the intersecting BAR-B-Q as my first answers with doubled-up letters. I chipped away, working from the bottom up, slowly filling in most of the grid, bar the top left quadrant. The answer to 1a eluded me for some time, but when that was solved I made reasonably headway with the rest.
The ‘message’ wasn’t yielding – my fault, as I’d omitted to note a couple of corrections and simply overlooked “overseAs” in 40a. When I’d sorted those out (plus the corrections at 9a & 2d), the message became apparent: WHITE TO PLAY, MATE IN ONE. I’d noticed the numerous occurrences of B and W in the doubled-up letters, but only now did I leap to the realisation that we had a chess endgame.
Given that there had to be an empty cell in the final grid, it was clear that a White piece had to take a Black one, and that it had to be the White Rook capturing the Black Rook – this not only gives check on the Black King from the Rook now on the back rank but also reveals check (see title?) from the White Bishop along the white diagonal thereby stopping the Black Queen simply blocking & delaying the mate (and the Black kNight was pulling its weight by threatening another escape square, while the White King is safely out of harm’s way).
The final grid, with ‘real words’ (= entries in Chambers) WREATHERS, WREN, ESTERS, and -IST, becomes:
Well done eXternal for a great grid construction – tho’ some clues were fierce. (I didn’t pick up on the chess references in some clues until after I’d finished.) Not sure about my reading of 31d (hover over “clue” in the table below) and I don’t see which clue the O from ONE comes from – I’m sure that one (or more) of you will enlighten me. {See comments @2, 3, 5, 8.}
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Answer 2 into 1 |
Correction to definition |
Wordplay | |
| 1 | PULLS THROUGH | W | weathers | PULLET (young hen) with S for E (changing direction) + H(our) + ROUGH (ruffled) |
| 9 | ARISE | H | hap | ARIS (behind, arse {Cockney rhyming slang}) + E (base) |
| 10 | QUONKED | I | made unwitting din | (Ban)QUO (Shakespearean general) + NAKED (helpless) − (Tit)A(nia) |
| 12 | SABKHA | K(ing) in SABHA (prayer beads) | ||
| 13 | BREATHER | [HEART]* after BRE (Bachelor of Religious Education, US) | ||
| 15 | SLEDGER | S(hip) + LEDGER (log) | ||
| 18 | SHOP | T | store | H(ard) in SO (extremely) + P (softly) |
| 19 | NO-ONE | E | person | NOONE(d) (rested at lunchtime) |
| 20 | EWKED | KED (wingless fly) after EW(e) (sheep) | ||
| 21 | BRAWN | BROWN (sear) with O(ver) replaced by A | ||
| 23 | WRESTER | WRESTLER (sportsman) − L(eft) | ||
| 24 | CUSPID | CU (copper) + DIPS (declines) rev. | ||
| 27 | URGE | T | to incite | SURGEON (doctor) − SON outside |
| 28 | RORT | (mir)ROR T(est) | ||
| 29 | SWORN | O | given oath | N(ewborn) + ROWS (fights) rev. |
| 33 | BAR-B-Q | BARB (bit of hook) + Q(ueue, line) | ||
| 34 | TANNERY | P | to convert pelts | ANNE (queen) in TRY (hear) |
| 35 | COLOURY | COY (retiring) around LOUR (glare) | ||
| 37 | DEW-BOW | homophones: DUE (outstanding) BEAU (boyfriend) | ||
| 39 | TOLKIEN | L | Bilbo’s mastermind | L(oo)K IE (that is) in TON (high fashion) |
| 40 | LOIRE | A | department overseas | OR (gold) in LIE (false account), characters 2 & 4 |
| 41 | EMBEZZLEMENT | Y | money drawn crookedly | E (bearing) + MBE (award) + PUZZLEMENT (surprise) − UP rev. |
| Down | ||||
| No. | Answer 2 into 1 |
Correction to definition |
Wordplay | |
| 1 | PAS | M | ballerina’s move | SAP (fool) rev. |
| 2 | URALI | A | bane | [PECULIAR − PEC (muscle)]* |
| 3 | LIBKEN | BK (bank) in LIEN (right to keep property) | ||
| 4 | SEA GOD | T | Triton, among others | SEADOG (pirate) with DOG (trail) rev. |
| 5 | HUE | E | tone | HOE (weed) with middle letter changed |
| 6 | ROASTS | O (0, duck) in S(mall) TSAR (leader) rev. | ||
| 7 | ON THE TURN | (m)ONTH (period) + ET (alien) URN (vessel) | ||
| 8 | GEEP | G(orilla) + (d)EE(r) + (chim)P | ||
| 11 | DRUDGERY | I | menial tasks | RUDGE (Barnaby R. {Dickens}, village idiot) in DRY (exhausted) |
| 13 | BREN | B(arrel) + REN (discharge fluid, formerly) | ||
| 14 | HOWKER | HOW (question) + KER(nel) (centre, half) | ||
| 15 | SUBERECT | N | being raised, nearly | REBUS (puzzle) rev. + ECT (hospital treatment) |
| 16 | DOWNSTROKE | [WORK TO SEND]* | ||
| 17 | REED | PAIR needs answer around to become REPAIRED (mended) | ||
| 22 | AURAL | A + URAL (river, runner from {Ural} mountains) | ||
| 23 | WRIST | S(outh) (point) in WRIT (legal document) | ||
| 25 | PUB QUIZ | U(nion) in PB (lead) + QUIZ (pump) | ||
| 26 | FONDLE | TICKLE − TICK (mite) after FOND (affectionate) | ||
| 30 | WAY | O |
wont |
double definition: (i) =habit, (ii) =far |
| 31 | NEWBIE | homophone of BEE (worker) after N, E, W (contractors, potentially {bridge}) {not sure I’ve got the explanation of this clue right} |
||
| 32 | FRORN | F(ische)R + OR (other ranks, men) + (k)N(ight) | ||
| 33 | BOOM | N | (reaching?) chain | BROOM (shrub) − R(ook) |
| 36 | REZ | ZER(o) rev. | ||
| 38 | WET | E | hose | VET (veteran, one who served) with doubled first letter (see W in Chambers) |
|
|
||||
Our experience started off just like your HolyGhost! We also missed the ‘a’ in ‘overseas’ and our parsing of 31d was the same as yours.
Unfortunately we can’t help you any further despite finding all the letters in the ‘message’. We hunted for the puzzle (we normally put it to one side until the blog is published) but cannot find it.
Working out the final moves took some time until Bert suddenly realised that the chessboard was smaller than the grid!
Thanks eXternal – this was a good challenge.
Thanks also to HolyGhost for the excellent blog.
I had 30d as a misprint of WONT (=way) thus giving the missing O.
I too struggled with this one, in fact I took a break to do 1293 and then came back to it. Nevertheless, a very enjoyable puzzle. Thanks to eXternal and, of course, H___ G____.
Thanks v. much for the blog HolyGhost. Great puzzle which only ‘revealed’ its pleasuresd after much head-scratching.
Took me a while to realise the doubled-up letters were in fact chess pieces and then put off by the size of the “board” but as there was only one ‘revelatory’ end-game move possible (WRxBR), which left a rather unsatisfactor “-ist” in 23d, I settled on that.
The “O” you’re looking for is in 30D: Wont= way = ‘far’ in America DD.
I thought the crossword puzzle was much better than the chess puzzle and would have preferred a less obvious final move. If more pieces had been on the ‘board’ it could have been more interesting. A nice idea though – and very economical in the way the playing area was defined.
Thank you eXternal [and HolyGhost for the blog].
I found this really tough going and was pleased when I eventually completed the grid. I then blew it by not being able to see the mate in one although I could see what move had to be made. I just couldn’t make the mental leap of realising the chessboard was smaller than the grid!
There were several clues I couldn’t parse properly, but the only one I still have reservations about is 33a. Can “char” really be a definition for “bar-b-q”?
I too had “wont” as the corrected definition in 30d to yield the missing “O” but my favourite clue was 41a.
Thanks eXternal and HolyGhost for a great puzzle and blog.
A beast of a puzzle, and one which I only completed the day before the deadline for submissions. All in all, I thought it was fair – I’m sure there are some for whom bar-b-q’ing and charring aren’t synonymous, but for me they most definitely are. Very glad the chess puzzle was simple. Thanks for the blog.
Excellent puzzle, which was a fairly slow revelation, but it all came together very sweetly. I have always thought charring was what the barbq ritual was all about. Burnt offerings and all that.
Thanks to HolyGhost for the beautifully presented review. Commenters are correct about the extra O coming from WONT misprint.
I had thought about a two-step process for the endgame. However, grid restrictions were against me. I wanted the doubled-up cells to be checked both ways for fairness and think it would also have been much tougher if not done so. Also, I use the Ximenean guidelines on barred-grid unching, this makes the gridfill challenging enough.
The combination of letters to indicate chess pieces don’t really lend themselves too readily for use within real words. In fact, the only two possible phrases/words using the combination BQ are BARB-Q and PUBQUIZ, with the latter not even having an entry in Chambers. Then the positioning of the answers needs to be quite exact to enable a chess problem to be incorporated as an endgame. Adding more pieces was just quite beyond my grid-constructing abilities. I also took the view that not all solvers have experience of chess and that a difficult denouement might detract from the puzzle for those people.
I was happy enough to get the resultant grid and glad that the puzzle proved a meaty challenge. Thanks to the editing team for accepting the puzzle without too many changes from submission, I used some tricky clueing devices which I would probably not use in a daily cryptic, so was pleased to see these accepted.
Finally, thanks to the all commenters and also to the two eds who gave me double-billing for the Saturday Prize and Inquisitor on the same day.
Thanks for the insight. I can see that the technical difficulties are pretty daunting [odd that none of the ‘subq…….’ possibilities are in Chambers either].
I certainly found it a ‘meaty challenge’ – and fun.