Preamble: Once upon a time there were three innocent bloggers whose names were Hi Ho and Ba. They were set upon by an unscrupulous and extremely cunning setter. This setter produced a crossword of unimaginable cleverness† which baffled the poor bloggers by having TWO perfectly plausible solutions except in one minor respect. The crossword was a masterpiece of indirection producing a picture of a hat which was a TRILBY or FEDORA. This so baffled the bloggers that they went to press with an incorrect solution. The setter’s name was POINTER. Two years and four months later the same bloggers came across the same setter again. But this time they came forewarned and forearmed! The story continues . . .
The rubric stated: The theme – the name of a hero strongly linked to one of the answers – is to be highlighted in the final grid. To accommodate the answers several cells require two letters. The centres of these cells must be joined by straight lines to form a polygon, resembling an object that is a clue to the theme. One letter in each letter-pair must be erased so that those remaining spell out a theme-related name as the polygon is traced. A statue of the hero may be found in a place that appears in adjoining cells of the grid to be highlighted. Numbers in brackets indicate the number of cells for the entry. One clue answer is an abbreviation.
Solving progressed slowly, the lack of any clue about where the two-letter squares were to be, or how many of them there were was a handicap, but 6 of them were identified quite easily. These gave the alternatives: T/W, C/E, B/L, R/E, R/S and E/L. Now the second option in each of these was WELESL and, having identified WATERLOO as 40A, this immediately brought to mind Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington – the hero of Waterloo. This aided in the discovery of the remaining two-letter alternatives. A while later, with a completed grid, these were the double-letter squares reading from top left, clockwise.
| T | L | E | B | R | R | E | C | H |
| W | E | L | L | E | S | L | E | Y |
The second alternatives in the nine doubly occupied squares spelled WELLESLEY, and WELLINGTON was to be found three rows from the bottom. Joining the dots gave a picture of a Wellington boot. Easy-peasy!! All that remained was to find where the statue was. Searches for Bank, Hyde Park Corner, London, Princes Street, Glasgow, Trim etc. yielded no results, the closest approach being a diagonal HPC starting at square 17.
It was at this point that suspicions were aroused. Hadn’t we been here before? What if the letters spelled some other hero? If they did it had to be a foreign hero, probably German as the letters RECHT seemed to have to be together. It couldn’t be BRRECHT, so must be BERECHT and the two remaining letters could be LE or EL. A bit of Googling followed, yielding the name GEBHARD LEBERECHT von BLÜCHER. Most of my (Hi) information about Waterloo, prior to reading up for this blog, was obtained from “Sharpe’s Waterloo” by Bernard Cornwell, part of the “Sharpe” series of historical novels concerning (mostly) the Peninsular war, and a rattling good read they are too! Historically they are pretty accurate except in that the main protagonist often takes over the deeds of others. Anyway I recognised the name von Blücher. He was the Prussian Field Marshall who saved the day at Waterloo by arriving late in the afternoon and changing the balance of the battle against Napoleon.
Back to the wicked Pointer. Aha! To quote The Who “We don’t get fooled again!” After eliminating the incorrect alternatives, BLUCHER could be found reading diagonally up from one of the double-letter squares and going through two others. This illustrates the significance of the words “in the final grid” in the rubric. WATERLOO remains the answer strongly linked to the hero, and one Google later found that a statue of von Blücher was erected in his birthplace, ROSTOCK, which can be found in the top row.
But what of the boot? Another Google yielded the information that a Blücher was also a piece of footwear – see the picture – and so was an alternative interpretation of the polygon to the Wellington boot.
So there you have it. Another masterpiece by Pointer. It took a lot of thought to unravel some of the clues which were all fair and, like the grid, contained misdirection (see 7 and 28 down). He sets the Inquisitor rarely, but so brilliantly. The only question remaining is why is the title “Plunder”? The only reference I could find was Wellington’s order (ignored) forbidding plunder after the battle.
P.S. Just before publication I looked in the thesaurus for Plunder and found the word “BOOTY”!!
† For relative newcomers to the IQ, the crossword referred to was 1347 and the blog can be found here.
Across |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Clue (definition) | Answer | Wordplay |
| 1 | Shipwreck survivor is doing well without us (8) | PROSPERO | Prospero (The Tempest) was the shipwreck survivor: PROSPEROUS (doing well) minus US |
| 7 | Supplies spades to empty cask (5) | STOCK | S(pades) + TO + C(as)K |
| 10 | One who attacks bishop protecting adviser (6) | RAIDER | RR(bishop) round AIDE (adviser) |
| 12 | Short hooks and file remove obstruction (6) | UNCLOG | UNC(i) (short hooks) + LOG (file) |
| 14 | Ref’s assistant dismissed injured Sam in whites (5) | LINEN | LINESMAN (ref’s assistant) minus [SAM]* |
| 15 | Conman is more like a country gent with added dash (6) | TWEEDLER | TWEEDIER (more like a country gent) + a “dash” to convert I to L |
| 16 | He makes the grade, but fails and cries uncontrollably (10) | CLASSIFIER | [FAILS CRIES]* |
| 18 | Islander in Cuba with odd type touring port (8) | CYPRIOTE | C(uba) + [TYPE]* round RIO (port) |
| 21 | Part of sleepy suburb is flipping wet, as some Locals say (4) | SYPE | Hidden backwards in sleEPY Suburb |
| 22 | Line at end of court shows service from BT (4) | DATEL | DATE (court) + L(ine) |
| 24 | Without a leader, thirty march badly, with uneven beat (9) | ARRHYTHMIC | [(t)HIRTY MARCH]* |
| 26 | False or variable rates? Variable! (5) | ERSATZ | [RATES]* + Z (variable) |
| 28 | Three chancellors take separate directions after a turning (8) | ACESCENCE | A + CE (Chancellor of the Exchequer) three times separated by S and N (directions) |
| 29 | People who lived in India or Iran maybe (4) | NAIR | [IRAN]* |
| 31 | Top cut out of paper to produce comics (5) | FOOLS | FOOLSCAP (paper) minus CAP (top) |
| 34 | Working on tapestry shows English towns overlapping (9) | CREWELLING | CREWE + WELLING overlapping |
| 35 | Many people in society (4) | TONS | Double definition – TONS = many and TONS also means people of fashion or society |
| 37 | Australian ran behind European initially not allowed (6) | ENABLED | E(uropean) + N(ot) + A(ustralian) + BLED (ran) |
| 38 | Final words were distorted during crash (7) | FAREWELL | [WERE]* in FALL (crash) |
| 39 | Wrong answer doesn’t show wife more able to reason (5) | SANER | [ANS(w)ER]* |
| 40 | Pool, then card game – bridge? (8) | WATERLOO | WATER (pool) + LOO (card game) |
Down |
|||
| 1 | Pastor explores outside paradise to get priorities (11) | PRECEDENCE | P(astor) + RECCE (explore) round EDEN (paradise) |
| 2 | US coaches mock computer-animated film (7) | RAILCARS | RAIL (mock) + CARS (2006 Pixar film) |
| 3 | Section cut from earth to remove friction (3) | OIL | SOIL minus S(ection) |
| 4 | What some writers need – Edmund in particular! (4) | PENS | SPENSER (Edmund) contains (and needed) PENS |
| 5 | Wrought iron added to corner to give strength way back (7) | RENFORCE | [FE CORNER]* (Fe = iron) |
| 6 | Get the better of man in Durban with dope (5) | OUTWIT | OU (man in Durban) + TWIT (dope) |
| 7 | 5 out of 7 bananas cut a while back (4) | SNEE | 7 = SEVEN remove V (5) and anagram (bananas) |
| 8 | Antique regularly offloaded (3) | OLD | Regularly OffLoaDed |
| 9 | Charlie ordered seconds of meat, potato and sliced vegetable (3) | COLE | C(harlie) + pOtato + sLiced+ mEat |
| 11 | Drive off; with time this could give you speed limit (5) | DISPEL | [DISPEL TIME]* = SPEED LIMIT |
| 13 | Headless monster captures a community for the nation (6) | GREECE | (o)GRE (headless monster) round EEC (European Economic Community) |
| 17 | Songs giving echo from membranes (5) | HYMNS | HYMENS (membranes) minus E(cho) |
| 18 | Upturned glass protects the best plant, with out- of-date name (7) | SPICKNEL | LENS (glass) reversed round PICK (best) |
| 20 | Take a crossword, say, and avoid turning up for merrymaking (6) | RAZZLE | R (take) + A + PUZZLE minus UP reversed |
| 21 | Supply these ends of royal shield (7) | SHELTER | [THESE R(oya)L]* |
| 23 | Island in marble – an Oriental isle (6) | TAIWAN | TAW (marble) round I(sland) + AN |
| 25 | Honey’s off and no Earl Tea (4) | HYSON | [HONYS]* – HONEY’S minus E(arl) |
| 27 | Sort of bet with relative? (5) | TREBLE | &lit clue: [BET REL]* |
| 28 | Eight in Edinburgh no longer smoked there (4) | AULD | Answer eight (8A) is OLD – definition: AULD is Scottish for old and Auld Reekie (old smokey) is a nickname for Edinburgh. Excellent clue!! |
| 30 | A period of history is set up in theatre (4) | ARENA | AN + ERA (period of history) all reversed |
| 31 | Truncated pipe on a board controlling game (4) | FIFA | FIF(e) (tuncated pipe) + A |
| 32 | Cruel person is elevated so (4) | OGRE | ERGO (so) reversed |
| 33 | Capital of Czechoslovakia (4) | OSLO | Another clever clue – hidden in CzechOSLOvakia |
| 36 | He stays up at night, but is out when in bed (3) | OWL | Put OWL in BED to get BOWLED (out) |
20D-why is take-R
@1: R stands for Latin recipe, take.
Ha!
We weren’t going to fall for that again … except I still got to the point of shading in WELLINGTON and choosing WELLLESLEY before I’d identified the site of the statue – at least I was wary enough to use a pencil. As you say, absolutely brilliant – perhaps not quite so perfect as the TRILBY/FEDORA pairing, but the fact that Pointer has found another such coincidence and exploited it to make another stunning puzzle is truly remarkable.
The clues were all fairly gentle, indeed I completed this on a Boxing Day car journey without a dictionary, but I was slightly hampered by knowing virtually nothing of Waterloo, so had to do some Googling to work out what was going on. Surprisingly a tentative google of Leberecht didn’t immediately throw up the obvious hit, so I was briefly sidetracked by looking for statues of EROS, appearing in the top row (was the GREECE in 13D deliberately included as additional misdirection, or am I being paranoid now?), and trying to join the points up in different ways to make something like a cupid’s bow. A jumble of letters in top left make Piccadilly, so it took me a while to fully discount this.
Do you think the publishing of this puzzle was deliberately timed to ensure that you were blogging it again, Hi?
OPatrick @3: I doubt if it was more than coincidence that it fell to me to blog again. That would add a layer of deviousness in both setter and editor that I don’t think likely, but . . .
Another brilliant construction, and Trilby/Fedora bells rang early, especially when the polygon emerged as far too short in the leg for a typical welly boot.
Having been deceived by Pointer’s famous (infamous?) Inquisitor 1347 I was ready for this one, but it still took me an inordinate length of time to find the Blucher theme. For a long time I thought it might be Duke Ellington – could the outline possibly be a grotesque Grand Piano? – and then considered Elgin and Eros before finally trying to construct another name from the available double entries. This eventually yielded Leberecht as a possibility and a Google search soon led me to Blucher, Rostock and triumph.
Many thanks to Pointer for another masterpiece and to Hihoba for the blog.
I can claim with some certainty to be the only Inquisitor enthusiast to have spent 15 out of every 24 hours of his/her five years of secondary education … in my case between Jan. 1947 and Dec. 1951 … within a mere 25 yards of A LIFESIZE BRONZE STATUE OF FIELDMARSHAL BLUCHER.
So, as a fossilized old “Trilbyite” who swam into Pointer’s previous brilliant trap, I would have hung my head in shame, if, having strayed into this equally well-prepared catch-pit,I had been unwilling to clamber out again. My dear old dad often quoted the Iron Duke’s advice that “time spent on reconnaissance is seldom wasted”. The grid, having refused to yield more than the first two letters of Hyde Park Corner, did also include Wellington, but Google told me that the hilltop statue is some 3km. from that Somerset town. Rostock then rang a distant bell, and Google finally confirmed my suspicion that the boot outline was much more of a Blucher than of a Wellington, which traditionally comes half way up the calf. Thanks, HiHoBa, for the “booty” title explanation … my feeble guess had been that “plunder and loot” was rhyming slang for “boot”, á la “trouble and strife.”
To use the correct version of the Duke’s post-Waterloo phrase “A damned nice thing”, Pointer. Huge respect and awe !
PS Unlike HiHoBa’s, my admiration of the Sharpe series is based entirely on the TV series. Having been retired now for over thirty years, I watch their regular re-runs on weekday afternoons with undiminished enjoyment.
Murray Glover @7: The Wellington memorial at Wellington in Somerset is not a statue, it is an obelisk. I have driven past it regularly for years on the A303, so I wasn’t tempted by it as the place mentioned in the rubric.
The Sharpe books are worth a read! The TV programmes follow the books pretty closely, though Sharpe is a cockney in the earlier books. Cornwell relocated him after Sean Bean took the role in the TV series. I read the books in the order of their historical sequence, rather than the order they were written, which I recommend.
Thanks Hi @8, and for the blog. In earlier years, I often drove down the A303, and would have seen the obelisk, but not known what it signified. Likewise, for many years I thought the Hardy monument in Dorset was in memory of the novelist, rather than of the Vice-Admiral.
Having been an avid reader up to the age of 13 … Henty, Sci-fi, Biggles, Sanders of the River, etc. … I suddenly and irrevocably lost the ability to concentrate on more than two paragraphs of writing at a time, Ever since then I have been quite unable to read any book properly, a distinct drawback during my university years. I do get a bit confused about historical sequence in TV episodes of Sharpe … particularly the Indian ones.
I was not aware that Pointer was responsible for the Trilby/Fedora episode. I had read about it but I don’t think I did the puzzle. Hence I fell into the Wellington tap. I had no idea where any Wellington statues might be located, so when I did not spot anything immediately obvious I put the puzzle aside intending to come back for another look sometime and then forgot about it.
I was dimly aware there is a place called Rostock and knew nothing of Blucher or his boot, so unless forewarned that Wellington was going to be wrong I was unlikely to have spotted them. It was still a very enjoyable puzzle even with the wrong answer. Thanks to Hihoba and Pointer.
Once bitten, twice shy, indeed.
Similar to OPatrick @3, I filled the grid fairly quickly, largely unaided. But having focussed on the Napoleonic Wars for History O Level, I was well aware of Blücher’s involvement at Waterloo (and his boots), and spotted Leberecht before Wellesley. A quick Google of Leberecht + Waterloo confirmed Blücher and the Rostock connection.
Also, I came across the only entry for Blücher in the ODQ: “Was für Plunder!” (literally “What rubbish!” but often misinterpreted) – a coincidence, given the title?
So … not too difficult – but quite good fun. Thanks Pointer and Hi(hoba).
Note: On Christmas day in the morning, someone by the name of dreynolds appended a commented on this puzzle (#1470) to Hihoba’s blog of Pointer’s previous puzzle (#1347), revealing the double-dealing going on here. We should take our lead from Derek Harrison’s Crossword Message Board: “Please do not discuss (or even mention) current puzzles until after the solution is published.”
I was amused to read of Murray Glover@9’s misconception regarding the Hardy monument in Dorset. When we moved to the area fifteen years ago we too thought it commemorated the author until we actually visited it. We have since found that we were not alone with even some locals not aware of who it really commemorates. By the way, I think Murray and Hi mean the A38 or M5 rather than the A303. You would need binoculars and a good line of sight to see the Wellington monument from the latter.
Howard L @12: You are right, the obelisk/monument visible from the A303 (which I thought was the Wellington Memorial) is actually a War Memorial. The Wellington one is, as you say, near the M5.
My wife and I also visited the Hardy Memorial under the same misapprehension as you – this is clearly a common error!
Brilliant. Loved the misdirection. It all seemed so pellucid, with WELLINGTON visible near WATERLOO long before I’d filled the grid. And WELLESLEY looked like solid confirmation, but where on earth was the statue location, and could that short boot really be a welly? Eventually I remembered the infamous FEDORA/TRILBY coup, but only from Fifteensquared analysis because I never got far enough into that one to see even the remotest prospect of an endgame. Tried the double letters again and light dawned with LEBERECHT and recourse to Google.
One memory that gave a bit of help was of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novel Monstrous Regiment, where there’s a running gag about officers giving their names to articles of clothing – Lieutenant Blouse, General Froc, and lots more. Which may have planted the idea that there could be more than one heroic military boot …
We knew that we were barking up the wrong tree with Wellington and discussed the possibility of another TRILBY/FEDORA type misdirection. We hadn’t realised that this puzzle was by the same setter however. Had we done so, we may have looked back at the other set of letters – we couldn’t get WELLESLEY out of our head. We noticed ROSTOCK but couldn’t connect it with WELLESLEY which is not surprising! We hadn’t heard of LEBERECHT or the boot.
We had intended to revisit the puzzle but unfortunately we were too preoccupied with other events.
Another masterpiece of misdirection – well done Pointer.
Thanks Hihoba for the blog and congratulations on sorting it all out.
Oh well for me it is a case of twice bitten hopefully, should Pointer or another setter find another example, thrice shy. Nonetheless a very enjoyable puzzle.
Having once myself having been quite correctly ticked off by Holy Ghost for a minor transgression it is good to see that he is still vigilently policing IQ commentary.
Thank you to John and his team, the setters and the hard working bloggers for an excellent set of IQs during 2016
I also want to add that I found the instructions confusing. The sentence that misled me was A statue of the hero may be found in a place that appears in adjoining cells of the grid to be highlighted
I was looking for the statue location in cells adjoining the shaded cells mentioned to the previous sentence in the instructions. Otherwise why mention it? I take it for granted that unless otherwise specified all entries in the grid are adjacent cells, normally across or down and occasionally diagonal.
PeeDee @ 17: I take your point. If there was no mention of adjoining cells for the “hero” then it was not necessary for the place. It didn’t confuse me however, so I didn’t notice.