All answers in this puzzle needed to be changed thematically before entry, “[w]ith the help of an OCCASIONAL ITEM OF FURNITURE”. (Do you like the way I put square brackets around the initial W because it was a capital in the printed preamble? I hate this practice!)
Anyway, it didn’t take long to realise that, whereas all entries were of 6 letters, some clue lengths were only 4 or 5. Obviously the title was the clue, and the item of furniture seemed likely to be an occasional table. Wrong! The furniture was indeed table, but the “occasional” referred to periodic and we were dealing with the chemical symbols. It took me a bit of time to grasp this since I was pretty sure that it had been used recently somewhere else and wouldn’t be used so soon. [In fact it was, in Listener No 4341 What’s On by Nod.]
Like that one, filling the grid was somewhat tricky, as was deciding how to construct this blog. Hats off to MynoT for managing to get all entries to be 6 letters.
Solving time: far too long.
Legend:
Definition in clue
ABC* = anagram
ABC< = reversal
abCDef = hidden
| ACROSS | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| No | Answer | Entry | Clue and Explanation |
| 1 | HeAtHS | 285116 | Sheath, possibly, for butterflies (6) SHEATH* |
| 5 | PaSTe | 911652 | Cheap jewelry is beyond ecstasy (5) PAST (beyond) E (ecstasy) |
| 10 | CuRaRa | 298888 | This month artist gets relaxant in surgery (6) CUR (this current month) ARA (artist) |
| 12 | BrOAcH | 358891 | Spit beginning to burn fish (6) B (beginning to Burn) ROACH (fish) |
| 13 | FrAtCH | 878561 | Local quarrel of friar in church (6) FR (friar) AT (in) CH (church) |
| 14 | NOsHEs | 776199 | Ayesha surrounded by refusals for snacks? (6) SHE (Ayesha, from Ryder Haggard) surrounded by NOS (refusals) |
| 15 | ReAlOs | 751376 | Genuine large coins (6) REAL (genuine) OS (outsize, large) |
| 16 | BHArAl | 511813 | Blue sheep initially become hesitant beside inland sea (6) BH (initially Become Hesitant) + ARAL (inland sea) |
| 17 | LuPaRa | 719188 | Nasty weapon left by Unionist soldier (6) L (left) U (Unionist) PARA (sailor); according to the ODE, a sawn-off shotgun |
| 19 | ErRaNd | 688860 | Sin with commission (6) ERR (sin) AND (with) |
| 21 | ClOsEr | 177668 | Sales clincher of Conservative failure (6) C (Conservative) LOSER (failure) |
| 25 | FrAcAs | 878933 | Row with French arbitration service (6) FR (French) ACAS (arbitration service) |
| 30 | CYCLiC | 639636 | Some fancy cliché about rings (6) in fanCY CLIChé |
| 31 | SeCoNd | 342760 | Back in a short while (6) 2 meanings |
| 32 | PArEr | 151868 | Using this doesn’t start to make you thinner – or might it? (5) [s]PARER; really not sure how to decribe this! |
| 33 | MoThS | 429016 | Is he in the country fleeing from great beasts (fly-by-nights)? (5) BEHEMOTHS (great beasts) – BE HE (is he, dialect) |
| 34 | SeAmAs | 349533 | James from Dublin is on the ocean having not finished service (6) SEA (ocean) + MAS[s] (service, not finished) |
| 35 | FrAcK | 878919 | Scots eager to extract gas (5) 2 meanings |
| 36 | PErI | 156853 | Fairy in circumnavigation? No more (4) PERIPLUS (circumnavigation) – PLUS (more) |
| 37 | SCArF | 166189 | In New York, greedily devour joint (5) 2 meanings |
| DOWN | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| No | Answer | Entry | Clue and Explanation |
| 1 | CaRbON | 203787 | No, bracelet not on earth allowed to be returned for diamonds, for example (6) (NO BRACELET – E (earth) LET (allowed))< |
| 2 | AtLaTl | 855781 | Throwing stick at lecturer twice (6) AT L (lecturer) twice |
| 3 | TeRnEs | 528699 | Maritime service in river in Middlesbrough producing covers with alloy (6) RN (Royal Navy, maritime service) in TEES (Middlesborough river) |
| 4 | KEsAr | 199918 | Old emperor makes arrangements in part (5) in maKES ARrangements |
| 6 | ArReAr | 187518 | What’s due a bishop’s attention? (6) A RR (bishop, right reverend) EAR (attention) |
| 7 | CHINO | 615378 | Material letter? Not at all (5) CHI (letter) NO (not at all) |
| 8 | BOHoS | 586716 | Note former pupil promoted unconventional people (5) (SOH (note) OB (Old Boy, former pupil))<; short for Bohemians |
| 9 | CaSCa | 201620 | Classic car regularly supplied for conspirator (5) regular letters of ClAsSiC cAr |
| 10 | NiPS | 281516 | Tots whirl around (4) SPIN< (whirl, around) |
| 11 | RaPtEr | 887868 | More entranced by predator possessing energy and nothing to lose (6) RAPTOR (predator) containing E (energy) losing O (nothing) |
| 18 | RaThEr | 889068 | That woman supports traitor more readily (6) HER (that woman) under RAT (traitor) |
| 20 | RaCHEs | 886199 | Veteran tracking dogs is hot in competitions (6) H (hot) in RACES (competitions) |
| 21 | HITcH | 153431 | Attack companion in lift (5) HIT (attack) CH (Companion (of Honour)) |
| 22 | ReMoP | 754215 | Concerning grimace once more to wipe away? (5) RE (concerning) MOP (grimace) |
| 23 | AuCuBa | 792956 | Native of Japan taking gold to Castro’s home (6) AU (gold) + CUBA (Castro’s home); Japanese plant |
| 24 | EuCHRe | 636175 | Her cue to play game (6) (HER CUE)* |
| 26 | TaXeS | 735416 | Time to cut second demands (5) T (time) AXE (to cut) S (second) |
| 27 | ThAtCH | 908561 | Roof for the church there (6) THAT CH (church) |
| 28 | BrEuEr | 356368 | Architect associated with Bauhaus could have made beer acceptable for women (6) BREWER ([who] could have made beer) with U (acceptable) for W (women); don’t like missing ‘who’ |
| 29 | GaBiEs | 318399 | Idle talk that is singular for some simpletons (6) GAB (idle talk) IE (that is) S (singular) |
Enjoyable puzzle which must have been a nightmare to set – all entries that can have “elemental” constituents and cross-checking too! I take my hat off to Mynot.
As the “with” was the first word in the preamble, it surely had to be capitalised.
Wow – thanks to Dave H for ‘taking one’ for the EV blogging team!…Embarrassed to say, but this is the first EV I have failed to solve in a while – I did wonder about the ‘occasional’ table being the periodic one, but couldn’t find enough six-letter elements to even start filling the grid…never occurred to me to substitute the numbers!…
Nice work from Mynot, and hats, or rather 1-85-16 (Hydrogen, Astatine, Sulphur), off to all who worked this one out!
Thanks, mc. If it hadn’t been my week, I can safely say I’d have given this a miss once I’d established the theme.
Glad you enjoyed it chesley. My problem with “with” relates to square bracketing one letter in a word simply because its case doesn’t match the original: here my “with” was lower case because it was in the middle of the sentence whereas in the preamble it was upper case at the beginning!