Haven’t seen an Inquisitor puzzle by Charybdis since “I want my sausages” last summer.
Preamble: The wordplay in each clue leads to an extra letter, forming a coded message. Of six unclued grid entries, two are from a parody of a well-known song and two pairs appear in another song. The name (4) in this second song decodes the message by summing letters using repeats of the name. So if JOHN (for instance) were added to a message beginning ISAZYYY this would decode to SHINING since J+I=S, O+S=H, H+A=I, N+Z=N, J+Y=I etc. The decoded message must be obeyed, applying it to a verse deduced from the letters in 17 cells forming a cross in the grid.
Asymmetric grid … often promising. Quite soon saw that TANGERINE would be bottom left (across), possibly followed by DREAM (wrong) mid-left. (Ed: I do wish that unclued entries would be numbered, to make it easier to refer to them.) Sometime later LOOKING-GLASS slotted in top right (down) – shades of Alice? Maybe, maybe not. The breakthrough came (after a burst of solving in the top right) with TWINKLE, leading to a resolution of TEA TRAY and the intersecting TIES (bottom right).
OK – TWINKLE and TEA TRAY come from Lewis Carroll’s
Alice … in Wonderland, in which the Mad Hatter recites a parody of “Twinkle twinkle little star”. However, LOOKING-GLASS isn’t Alice-related after all, but is paired with TIES, from “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” by The Beatles. (The other pairing is TANGERINE TREES.) 
Clearly the name to be used to decode the message is LUCY, but (a) I had half a dozen more clues to solve, and (b) as I was tackling the puzzle while we were driving to/from a family lunch in London, I’d wait until I got home and then use a spreadsheet to help with decoding.
After a few minor corrections (e.g. initially I had EYNE for “old eyes” in 23a instead of EINE), the decoded instruction read SHADE EVERY LETTER FOUND IN LINES SEVEN AND EIGHT. Unfortunately, it had to be applied to a verse that I hadn’t yet deduced.
I stared at the grid for longer than I care to remember and the following afternoon picked out WORDSWORTH in row 4, but I didn’t find the intersecting SHE DWELT in column 4 until the evening. Nothing doing in my ODQ so I resorted to Google. “She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways” is reputedly (i.e. Wikipedia) the best known of Wordsworth’s series of five works which constitute his Lucy series, and the relevant lines read:
–Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
Back to the spreadsheet to do the shading, and about half way through I realised that the only cell that was going to remain unshaded was the solitary D (for Diamond), at the intersection of WORDSWORTH and SHE DWELT. How neat is that!
So many connections between various parts of the puzzle, and one that I’d missed earlier is that TEA TRAY in the parody replaces Diamond in the original. But what I hadn’t missed is that the title of the puzzle alludes to “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”, a song from the Broadway production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Many thanks to Charybdis – a very impressive and multifaceted puzzle indeed. For me, one of the best so far this year.
Added later: see the setter’s comment @6 regarding “a remarkable coincidence”.
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Clue | Answer | Extra letter |
Wordplay |
| 1 | Grammar School has dunces kissing Georgia’s cheeks (6) | SASSES | G | GS (Grammar School) ASSES (dunces) |
| 9 | Fiery colleen by end of meleé hit wretched fellows back (6) | EITHNE | M | (mêlé)E {sic: accents} [HIT]* MEN< (fellows) |
| 11 | Girl is easy-going over current boy (6) | ALISON | X | LAX< (easy-going) I (current) SON (boy) |
| 12 | They burn trees (4) | FIRS | E | FIRES (they burn) |
| 14 | A smidgin of Garotta decomposes rubbish (4) | GROT | S | G(arotta) ROTS (decomposes) |
| 15 | Verbal dispute and brawl over tuxedos (5) | WORDS | J | ROW< (brawl) DJS (tuxedos) |
| 16 | Most unpleasant old cabbagey plant (4) | WORT | S | WORST (most unpleasant) |
| 17 | Fish initially held by a coil of rope (4) | HAKE | F | H(eld) FAKE (coil of rope) |
| 18 | Responses from groupies used to be cut short by Sabbath (7) | ANSWERS | F | FANS (groupies) WER(e) (used to be) S(abbath) |
| 20 | Silly old song lyric – at first a couple but not the third (4) | TWIT | D | DIT (song lyric, archaic) after TW(o) (couple) |
| 23 | Hug one of a pair as seen in old eyes (7) | ENTWINE | I | TWIN (one of a pair) in EINE (eyes, obs) |
| 24 | Jack returns little Eugenia to compound (6) | GALENA | F | FLAG (jack) ENA (Eugenia, short form) |
| 26 | Disorderly slattern drops in Thursday after taking bishop out (6) | RAGTAG | H | RAGBAG (slattern) with TH for B(ishop) |
| 28 | Urchin prone to drooping swallows earth twice (6, 2 words) | SEA EGG | Y | SAGGY (prone to drooping) around E,E (earth, twice) |
| 29 | Reptile that’s utterly huge beside a hill (9) | ALLIGATOR | B | ALL (utterly) BIG (huge) A TOR (hill) |
| 35 | Money I’ll leave used to belong to him according to formal legal opinions (7) | FATWAHS | S | FAT (money) WAS HIS (used to belong to him) − I |
| 36 | Old violin section’s all right around bandstand (5) | KIOSK | T | KIT (violin, hist) + S(ection) in OK (all right) |
| 37 | Native abode no longer beside a gallery (6) | INNATE | T | INN (abode, obs) TATE (gallery) |
| 38 | Head in flames? – this might lead to an extra trick (7) | FINESSE | R | NESS (head) in FIRE |
| 39 | Old courts, says Edmund, regularly cleared stolenwise (4) | SEWS | O | S(t)O(l)E(n)W(i)S(e) |
| Down | No. | Clue | Answer | Extra letter |
Wordplay |
| 1 | One looking around a feature like a mole should find this? (8) | SEAWATER | R | SEER (one looking) around A WART (feature like a mole); &lit. |
| 2 | Gets out of bed and runs round (but no pressure) (5) | STIRS | N | SPRINTS< (runs) − P(ressure) |
| 3 | The girl’s knocked down and thrown (4) | SHED | K | SHE (the girl) KD (knocked down) |
| 4 | Charybdis recognises unions (6) | ENOSES | M | ME (Charybdis) NOSES (recognises) |
| 5 | Time one is put in lines for second sections in marches (5) | TRIOS | W | T(ime) + I (one) in ROWS (lines) |
| 6 | Military action won, evidence of injury but no compliance (7) | WARRING | S | W(on) SCARRING (evidence of injury) − C(ompliance) |
| 7 | Nasty thing we don’t allow in – we’re covered by it in sleep (9) | NIGHTWEAR | B | [THING]* WE BAR (don’t allow in) |
| 8 | A nut with the same note repeatedly infatuated of a girl (7) | ENTÊTÉE | T | EN (nut) TE TE TE (note ×3) |
| 10 | Smooth charge in the field in Poitiers (4) | IRON | G | GIRON (charge in the field, heraldry, Fr) |
| 13 | Admirable person, a good one with notebook (7) | STOTTER | J | ST (a good one) JOTTER (notebook) |
| 19 | Dry lake in one direction (4) | WELT | S | L(ake) in WEST (one direction) |
| 21 | Young bird – age uncertain – flew the nest (6) | EAGLET | F | [AGE]* LEFT (flew the nest) |
| 22 | Collect in drowning bathers (8) | INGATHER | B | (drown)ING BATHER(s) |
| 23 | The point of a slap-up meal (4) | EAST | F | FEAST (slap-up meal) |
| 25 | Wood floated to the top in garden feature? (7, 2 words) | TEA ROSE | K | TEAK (wood) ROSE (floated to the top) |
| 27 | A Plantagenet, though no young person, might be related to Dad (6) | AGNATE | E | A [PLANTAGENET − PLANT (young person)]* |
| 30 | Both girl and climber like securing pin when climbing (5) | LIANA | S | AS around NAIL (pin) all< |
| 31 | The Yorkshire men perhaps playing Kent and Surrey’s borders (5) | TYKES | N | [KENT + S(urre)Y]* |
| 32 | International investment in clever ID aid (4) | E-FIT | D | I(nternational) in DEFT |
| 33 | Pulley with ropes hung around a folded length of curtain (4) | SWAG | I | SWIG (pulley with ropes) around A |
| 34 | Irish girl – the girl’s at home (4) | ERIN | H | HER (the girl’s) IN (at home) |
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||||
All thanks to Charybdis and HolyGhost for a fine puzzle and an analysis which (phew) generally matches my own progress through this one. I had the same EYNE/EINE difficulty, needed help from Google at one point (the Beatles lyrics), and resorted to a spreadsheet decode because I always mess something up when repeatedly counting letters by hand. Nice final surprise, after expecting some kind of diamond pattern to emerge from shading, to find there was indeed “only one … shining in the sky.” Splendid grid construction!
A very similar experience to yours, down to the use of a spreadsheet to deal with the coding and shading bits, luckily as it turns out because my first stab at the code word was way off the mark. I never did work out what the D was supposed to stand for, guessing hopelessly it might be for dog. Never mind, the grid looked alright. 🙂 We seemed to have a lot to do this week, with lots of disparate bits to fit together, but it was very satisfying when everything fell into place.
Yes, a long, long slog, but got there finally, after realising that LINES SEVEN and EIGHT had no relationship to the grid, and that the WORDSWORTH, that had been shining out of the grid from the start, did actually have some relevance. Two comments …
1. Yes, a diamond, as in the song, is commonly held to be a girl’s “Best Friend”, as per title. But how many of you are old enough to have done National Service when the alphabet started Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog ? And of course a dog is commonly held to be man’s “Best Friend.”
2. How much easier it would have been for us to be required highlight the single D rather than to shade every other cell in the grid. For some reason I used green, and that made my white D cell appear light purple, even after I Tippexed it … can an ophthalmologist explain this … is it to do with saturated cones and/or rods ????
As often now, a bit of an IQ route march, and impossible without Google, but worth the slog.
Thanks Charybdis and HG.
Crikey, a lot going on here!
I was close to giving up a couple of times after a very slow grid fill (by the middle of the week I’d still got less than half done). I’m glad that I persevered though and after seeing LOOKING GLASS and TWINKLE emerge things began to progress, although I hadn’t realised quite how much was still required. I enjoyed completing the decoding (I think that’s the first time I’ve come across that technique but I guess that it or something similar will be familiar to more experienced IQ solvers). I didn’t manage to work out all of the extra letters but had enough to decipher some key words and then fill in the gaps. I then went wrong by picking a different Wordsworth verse: googling ‘Wordsworth’, ‘sea’ and ‘stir’ led me to the poem, “With ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh”. The second of line of which mentions “stars in heaven” so I thought that had to be it. After shading virtually the entire grid (I think ~6 cells were left) I wondered if I had the wrong poem as no meaningful shape was emerging, although as it turned out I wasn’t too far off. Thanks to Mr & Mrs Terrier for suggesting I find another poem. Good job I had kept a copy of my unshaded grid!
And congratulations Murray on your recent win ;O)
Many thanks to Charybdis for such a complex puzzle.
Murray Glover @3: Yes, the near-total shading was very daunting — like the past IQ where we had to black out almost the whole grid — and although it would probably have been within the rules I didn’t feel comfortable about using my default yellow highlighter for a representation of the night sky. In the end I scanned the inked-in grid, used a Photoshop-style app to add a dark blue (but transparent) overlay covering all but one square, and printed the result. Technocracy rules!
Thanks for the blog, HolyGhost, and for all the comments. Glad you seem to have enjoyed it after a bit of a tussle. That’s really what I hope for.
The starting point was the idea of having to shade the whole grid except for one cell, and that line from Wordsworth just popped into my head and it somehow all came together from that point on.
There was a remarkable coincidence that nobody here noticed which is that the letter mix of lines 7&8 of She Dwelt… is almost identical to the letters in lines 7&8 of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. The latter has a W and a D as well, so anyone who didn’t find the Wordsworth and took a punt on LSD will have shaded the whole grid! 😀
Thank you, Kippax @4 The fine chocolates actually arrived on Friday, BEFORE the 1495 winners had been announced ! In spite of the caveat “Allow six weeks for delivery”.
They were doubly welcome, as Monday was my 84th. birthday. I turned the box sideways to show our 4-year old grandson in Australia, when they Skyped us, and half of them fell on the floor, to his amusement.
Anyone have any ideas about green turning juxtaposed white into pale purple ? Or does that count as off-thread ? I’m not very good at netiquette.
I got most of the grid filled and made it as far as the Lewis Carroll references but after that I was lost and eventually gave up. I enjoyed what I did manage to do but it was hard work!
Thanks all.
A very enjoyable and (apart from the finding the Wordsworth verse – which I didn’t bother with) reasonably straightforward puzzle, despite its complicated nature. It helped that I recognised early on the Lewis Carrol and Beatles references which helped with solving some of the more difficult clues, as did the decoded instruction (again ignored). Many thanks to Charybdis for a very entertaining and educational puzzle (I’ve learned that a FAKE is a hank or loop of rope, etc, and that a SWIG is type of pulley), and thanks too to Holy Ghost for his excellent blog. I spotted one small error, HG, at 13 down. You’ve parsed the clue as follows “ST (admirable person) JOTTER (notebook)”. “ST”, in this case is the “good one”. The answer, STOTTER, is the “admirable person”.
Chris Jones @9: parsing typo in STOTTER now corrected – thanks.