proXimal invites us to take a punt on the STOCK EXCHANGE…will this pay dividends?…will there be a bull or bear market, or a great depression?!
The preamble states that:
“Twelve clues contain a letter that must be removed before solving; in clue order these spell out the game on which STOCK EXCHANGE is based. In the grid, initial letters of the components of the game provide information about the central four cells of the row on which they appear; from these, a keyword must be deduced. Solvers must replace a line of eight cells in the final grid with the keyword and the appropriate components. All entries in the final grid are real words, and Chambers Dictionary (2014) is recommended.”
So only 12 out of 40-odd clues have extra letters to provide the thematic game, which means most clues will be ‘normal’…dip the toe in the waters and see how we go…and hopefully the significance of the shaded central columns will become clear.
After a while the grid started to fill up, I had a few extra letters, but nothing jumping out at me. With some persistence, a few more of those letters looked like BUL…SAND…S…so maybe the ‘bull market’ was something to do with this?
Well, yes, but, no, but…the game turned out to be ‘BULLS AND COWS’, which I hadn’t heard of before, but is a variation on a deduction game I played in my youth called ‘Mastermind’ – with a set of four hidden coloured pegs being guessed by the opponent, who you would mark by awarding white pegs for ‘right colour, wrong place’, and black pegs for ‘right colour, right place’, until they either worked it out or ran out of goes.
In this case, it is letters, not colours, and proXimal is awarding us a B (BULL) for a right letter in the right place, and a C (COW) for right letter, wrong place.
However, before I could do that, I had to complete the grid, which took a bit more solving work.
Once complete, a bit of deduction (and a couple of wrong turns) led to the likely letters being KINE – which fits nicely with the stock (cattle) of the title. And after some time trying to justify having KINE across the bottom – but not being able to get four ‘B’ s in to keep things real words – NEBBEE? – I managed to fit them all in the third row:
A pleasant and challenging solve, with a clever (and nostalgic, in my case) denouement… Many thanks to proXimal for an original device which has produced an epitome of an EV…just the right level of clueing difficulty and end game, IMHO.
I’m off to roast my chestnuts on an open fire – I hope you’ve all been either naughty or nice, and that Santa brings all that you wish for!…
| Across | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Extra letter | Solution / Final entry | Clue (definition underlined) / Logic/Parsing |
| 1 | DICAST | Gods dismiss Athenian judge (6) / DI (gods, plural of deus) + CAST (dismiss) |
|
| 5 | (B)row | TIDIER | One died cutting brow to be less messy (6) / T_IER (row) around (cut by) I (one) + D (died) |
| 9 | SCLERA | Watery fluids covering edges of critical organ membrane (6) / S_ERA (watery fluids) around (covering) CL (the edge letters of CriticaL) |
|
| 10 | VENAE | Mercenary, corruptly exchanging lire for English vessels (5) / VENA(L)(E) – corruptly/mercenary – exchanging L (lire) for E (English) |
|
| 12 | JETSAM / JETSKI | Hail Mary after gang members abandoned goods (6) / JETS (gang members, from West Side Story?) + AM (Ave Maria, Hail Mary) |
|
| 14 | ARCO | Direction for player within popular company (4) / hidden word, i.e. within, ‘populAR COmpany’ |
|
| 15 | OILTREE | Plant wilts when shelled in seaweed and earth (7) / O_RE (seaweed) around ILT (wILTs, when shelled), + E (earh) |
|
| 16 | stat(U)e | ORISSA | Prayer missing on South American Indian statue (6) / ORIS(ON) (prayer, missing ON) + S(South) + A (American) |
| 18 | CELL | In conversation, betray where hermit might be found (4) / homophone – i.e. in conversation – CELL sounds like SELL (betray) |
|
| 19 | UNCAGE | Release new guidance after identification goes missing (6) / anag, i.e new, of GU(ID)ANCE – without ID (identification, going missig) |
|
| 25 | SERRAN | Fish swam in shoals after resolution to turn back (6) / SER (res, resolution, abbreviated, turning back) + RAN (swam in shoals) |
|
| 27 | ARAB | A band returned from the Middle East (4) / A + RAB (BAR, band, in heraldry, returning) |
|
| 28 | AIGRET | After changing hands, tag ornamental plume (6) / AIG(L)(R)ET – tag (aiglet) changing L (left) to R (right) – i.e. changing hands |
|
| 30 | go(L)d | ERRANDS | Gold collected in 25 curious missions of old (7) / D (god, deus) in ERRAN_S (anag, i.e curious, of SERRAN, 25A) |
| 33 | SCYE | Laird’s opening island’s college instead of knight (4) / S(K)(C)YE – island, Skye, with C (college) instead of K (kind) |
|
| 34 | b(L)asted | SKEWED | Blasted about 1024 bits awry (6) / S_EWED (bast+ed, tacked, or sewed) around K (kilobyte, 1024 bits?) |
| 35 | (S)ouk | A-WEEK | With which Scotsman would end work in souk, he’d say (5) / a Scotsman might say that ‘work’ end on a lower case ‘k’, or A WEE ‘K’ |
| 36 | RIANCY | Like grass to draw in before merriment (6) / RI_CY (like grass) around (drawing in) AN (Latin, ante, before) |
|
| 37 | RONDOS | Copies with end of record for electronic musical compositions (6) / RON(E)(D)OS photocopies, with D (end of recorD) for E (electronic) |
|
| 38 | ATTLEE | Labourite once introducing one who wouldn’t partake to alcohol and Ecstasy (6) / A_LE (alcohol) + E (ecstasy), around (introducing) TT (one who wouldn’t partake) |
|
| Down | |||
| Clue No | Extra letter | Solution / Final entry | Clue (definition underlined) / Logic/Parsing |
| 1 | (A)dele | DÉJÀ VU | Adele turned up Berry, Japan and bit of Elgar – old stuff for artist (6, two words) / D (delel, delete, Latin) + EJA VU (UVA – berry – plus J – Japan – plus E – bit of Elgar) – all turned up |
| 2 | ISERE | I find out about river for another (5) / I + SE_E (find out) around (about) R (river) |
|
| 3 | ALSO-RAN | One never placed oars fixed in a vacant location (7) / A plus L+ N ()vacant LocatioN), around SORA (anag, i.e fixed, of OARS) |
|
| 4 | na(N)tes | SEAT / SEKT | Nantes about to be surrounded by group (4) / SE_T (group) around (surrounding) A (about) |
| 5 | TAOIST / TANIST | ‘Pipe up’, one’s originally told worshipper (6) / TAO (oat, or pipe, up) + IS (one’s) + T (original letter of Told) |
|
| 6 | DEFT / DEBT | Clever and brilliant end to amusement (4) / DEF (slang, brilliant) + T (end letter of amusemenT) |
|
| 7 | (D)anger | INURED / INBRED | Hardened Greek character in danger departs (6) / I_RE (anger) + D (departs), around NU (Greek character) |
| 8 | REPELS / REBELS | Upset monarch sounds disheartened and drives off (6) / RE (ER, Elzabeth Regina, monarch, upset) + PE(E)LS (sounds, disheartened) |
|
| 11 | AMELIA / ABELIA | Lamb with absent member primarily due to this? (6) / A (absent) + M (member, of) + ELIA (Charles Lamb, essayist) |
|
| 13 | s(C)ale’s | SLATER / ELATER | Bladed tool’s scale’s upside down – one gets cut (6) / RETA(I)LS, sales, with I (one) cut out, all upside down |
| 17 | IGUANA | In SA, monitor sloth climbing around noisy bird (6) / I_A (ai, sloth, climbing) around GUAN (noisy bird) |
|
| 20 | b(O)ats | NARROW | Warn boats crossing right over channel (6) / NAR_W (anag, i.e. bats, of WARN) around (crossing) R right) + O (over) |
| 21 | (W)here | PRESENT | Where intelligence department is ignored by head of state (7) / PRES(ID)ENT – head of state missing ID (intelligence department) |
| 22 | CAESAR | Autocrat’s afflictions are to have lowered resistance (6) / CA(R)ES (afflictions) + A (are), lowering R (resistance) to the end gives CAESA+R |
|
| 23 | BARMEN | They might shift stout branch borne by tree (6) / B_EN (tropical tree) around (bearing) ARM (branch) |
|
| 24 | NIDORS | Bad smells stray, rising around dung beetle (6) / NI_S (sin, or stray, rising) around DOR (dung beetle) |
|
| 26 | NEED-BE | Listened to massage worker’s requirement (6) / homophones, i.e. listened to, of NEED (knead, massage) + BE (bee, worker) |
|
| 29 | MY EYE | I disagree second person in Bible must repeat after male (5, two words) / M (male) + YE YE (second person, you, archaic, or biblical, repeated) |
|
| 31 | ACED | Chancellor of the Exchequer in recent times served superlatively (4) / A_D (anno domini, recent times) around CE (Chancellor of the Exchequer) |
|
| 32 | bore(S) | SKAT | Card game bores entertaining king (4) / S_AT (bore, endured) around (entertaining) K (king) |
I thought this was a cracker. It took me ages to finally nail the 12 letter message, thanks to some incorrect parsing on my behalf. Once sorted, much like mc_rapper, childhood memories of the coloured Mastermind pegs were reignited. (I’m guessing we may have been born in the same year if the last two digits of your blogging name are a direct reference to birth year.)
A really well crafted and original endgame which raised a smile and made for a satisfying final gridfill.
My thanks to bloggers, setters and editors of all the EVs throughout 2016.
PS Does anyone know when the next EV will be out, with Sunday being Christmas Day?
Thanks for the comment, Phil R – sounds like a similar solving experience…and you are correct in your assumption re ’67 – a vintage year! In fact there is an ancient ‘Mastermind’ game in the cottage we are staying in over Xmas, so it may well get brought out to teach the kids tomorrow, during the ‘electronics ban’…I have already taught my 14-year old how to do a Rubik’s cube this holiday, so a retro time all round…
Good point re. Xmas Day and the EV – last time this happened, I vaguely remember there was an online-only version available on the Telegraph puzzles site (http://puzzles.telegraph.co.uk/site/index) – and there are references in today’s paper to puzzles being available tomorrow… There is also a free week’s trial mentioned, so anybody wanting an EV fix tomorrow could probably sign up for free and print off/download a PDF version…just remember to cancel the trial during the free period if you don’t want to get charged…
I also remember the last online-only version was numbered bizarrely – 150,001 or similar, and then the regular sequence restarted the following week – which may cause confusion with the blogging team for a while until we get our 4-weekly schedules back in line…going back to odd numbers will really upset my Feng Shui!
There is indeed an online EV today; serial number 100,008, Christmas Day Message by Stick Insect. There’s also a festive Toughie by MynoT, and a rather spectacular themed double Toughie by Elgar (which can be found under the General Knowkedge crossword link on the website).
It’s worth adding that for all EVs published from 01/01/2017, the closing date for entries will now be the second Thursday after publication, rather than the third. This means that solutions will appear in the newspaper two weeks after publication, rather than three, bringing things into line with the other Sunday Telegraph prize puzzles.
Chris Lancaster
EV Editor
Thanks both for the online tips. I’ll be heading there later. Chris, I have to ask why 100,008?
I believe that when puzzles were first published on the TP website on Christmas Day eight years ago, the decision was taken to give every puzzle that day (eg Cryptic, Quick, GK) the serial number 100,001 so that paper-only solvers didn’t wonder why there was a gap in the puzzle numbers appearing in the newspaper, and so that the serial numbers used wouldn’t clash (at least for many, many years) with the “normal” ranges of serial numbers. The next year all puzzles on Christmas Day were 100,002, and so on. Hence the next Christmas Day EV, which will appear in 2022, will be EV number 100,014 (unless things change).