Shark’s puzzles frequently involve a lot of clues that are difficult to parse, and this one was no exception. The denouement involved some Googling as the particular book referred to was not familiar to me, though the other related books are.
The preamble stated: The unclued entries include the full name of an author together with characters from an associated book. Definitions in across clues each contain a misprint; correct Letters spell out three further characters. Missing letters from the wordplay of two down answers are also relevant when fused together. The author’s name must be appropriately amended creating a number of new words.
So misprinted definitions, an author and some characters and two peculiar down clues and finally a modification of the author’s name.
I managed most of the top left corner reasonably easily (though parsing 12A gave problems – definition is murky!!), giving me J?AN?ER??????. Jean, Joan? After some dictionary research I came across OOPING for 6D and then LEGATOR and IRONY (7D & 8D). So J?AN?ERO?LI?? was clearly JOANNE ROWLING. From the preamble the book was clearly NOT Harry Potter, I tried her pseudonym Robert Galbraith, which led nowhere.
I found that 4D (which was ELASTIC) had wordplay that only referred to two letters EL, so the extra bit was ASTIC. This led me to the book FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM, and to 29D which started FANT(OM).
So now to the Googly bit: I haven’t read the book, nor seen the film (starring the brilliant Eddie Redmayne – who I saw in his first stage appearance as Viola in the Globe’s all male Twelfth Night in Middle Temple Hall) so I had to search the Wikipedia list of the creatures, eventually locating QUINTAPED, TROLL, GNOMES, GRIFFIN, DRAGON and KELPIE in the grid and ACORMANTULA, ERKLING and IMP in the misprinted letters. This enabled me to fill in the blanks in the grid, though parsing remained to do. Between us Ho and I parsed all but 35D whose wordplay has us baffled. Suggestions welcome.
I’m unsure why GNOME was given in the plural, when all the others were singular, and it would not have affected the puzzle to add a bar below GNOME and not shade the S.
The final step was to change the author’s name. Now “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” is fictionally written by Newt Scamander (13 letters like Joanne Rowling) so replacing the top line of the puzzle by NEWT SCAMANDER yields all real words.
A taxing puzzle, so thank you Shark. I confess that if I had not needed to blog it I might well have deemed it finished before working out all the details of the wordplay!
Across |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Clue Definition (Misprint) Correction | Answer | Wordplay | Mpt |
| 10 | (I)As windy after changing direction 90° (7) | EQUALLY | SQUALLY (windy) changing S to E (90° change) | A |
| 11 | Ex(p)cel Rob moving party along (6) | OVERDO | DO OVER (rob) moving DO (party) to the end | C |
| 12 | Mu(c)rky American beer – dropped dead (3) | SUS | Murky means suspiciously unrevealed: SUDS is American beer minus D(ead) | R |
| 13 | According to Tom Kitchin, t(h)oe taste returned (3) | TAE | EAT (taste) reversed | O |
| 15 | Stake in the red a(p)mple (4) | GOOD | GO (stake) + OD (overdrawn – in the red) | M |
| 16 | C(r)ay from travel sickness in retreat (4) | ISLE | hidden reversed in travEL SIckness | A |
| 17 | These had more than one ha(r)nd fruit – Shark’s replacing first one (6) | BIMANA | BANANA (fruit) with I’M (Shark’s) replacing the first AN | N |
| 19 | I cut out 500 lumps on nu(n)t (4) | INIA | INDIA (I in phonetic alphabet) less D (500) | T |
| 20 | It produces a c(e)urt way of writing notes up before class (9) | STENOTYPE | [NOTES]* + TYPE (class) | U |
| 21 | Before swindle, Lawrence is pi(v)loting (7) | TESTING | T.E. (Lawrence) + STING (swindle) | L |
| 22 | At Murrayfield, l(i)akes rugby players by the sound of it? (5) | LOCHS | Sounds like LOCKS (rugby players) | A |
| 25 | Ga(l)el to speak angrily about Conservative (5) | P-CELT | PELT (speak angrily) round C(onservative) | E |
| 28 | E(v)ra‘s husband to make do being retired (5) | EPOCH | H(usband) + COPE (make do) all reversed | R |
| 31 | Eve’s son even if until getting wor(d)k (9, 3 words) | SET HAND TO | SETH (Eve’s son) + AND (even if) + TO (until) | K |
| 32 | Pa(n)l Am flight’s third base (4) | AMIE | AM + I (third letter of flight) + E (base e) | L |
| 33 | M(a)idge finally singing with patriot (4) | GNAT | G (finally singinG) + NAT (patriot) | I |
| 34 | O(K)n to work (4) | ATOP | AT (to) + OP (work) | N |
| 35 | (C)Goal bank’s face cleared (3) | AIM | KAIM (bank) with face (K) removed | G |
| 36 | Sandp(a)iper‘s stripping wooden structures (3) | REE | (T)REE(S) (wooden structures stripped) | I |
| 37 | Out of bed before 7 donning garment that‘s further along the edge of the (b)Med? (7) | UPCOAST | UP (out of bed) + COAT (garment) round S (7 – Mediaeval Roman numeral) | M |
| 38 | Sell four million and initially rue mad process that results in two with many sha(r)pes (13, 2 words) | EULER’S FORMULA | [SELL FOUR M(illion) A(nd) RUE]* The definition refers to Euler’s polyhedron formula which is that for closed polyhedra (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron etc.) Vertices – Edges + Faces = 2 | P |
Down |
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| No. | Clue (definition) | Answer | Wordplay | |
| 1 | James, perhaps, pinches one Glaswegian milksop (6) | JESSIE | JESSE (James) round I (one) | |
| 2 | Vagrant issue held by which rustic Victorians? (7) | AUSSIES | AS (which) round [ISSUE]* | |
| 3 | Triangular symbols almost to continue after overturning injunction (6) | NABLAS | BAN reversed + LAS(t) (almost to continue) | |
| 4 | Flexible gambling house without limits (7) | ELASTIC | (H)EL(L) is a gambling house. ASTIC is unclued | |
| 5 | Romany man’s spirit (3) | RYE | Double definition | |
| 6 | In places, sewing two rings onto zip (6) | OOZING | OO (two rings) + Z(P)ING (zip). OK I’m persuaded. I think both OOPING and OOZING fulfill the clue. | |
| 7 | Will maker support a rise? (7) | LEGATOR | LEG (support) + A + TOR (rise) | |
| 8 | Hard female PM fired male companion (5) | IRONY | Irony in the sense of like iron: IRON LADY (female PM) minus LAD (male) | |
| 9 | Immoral in old age having flipped breaking old memorabilia (7) | GODLESS | ELD (old age) reversed (flipped) in GOSS (trinkets with town crest on them sold as memorabilia) | |
| 14 | Young fish from Sweden much reduced (5) | SMOLT | S(weden) + MOLT(o) (much) reduced | |
| 18 | Navy ship at sea, having lost signal to begin with, smashed into rocks (9) | APHANITES | [N(avy) SHIP AT (s)EA]* – S is removed as Signal first letter, smashed is the anagram indicator | |
| 23 | Once ordered bottomless glass imbibed without issue (7) | BESPAKE | BEAKE(r) (bottomless glass) round SP (sine prole – without issue) | |
| 24 | Silk gets man arrested by special constable at last (7) | SCHAPPE | SP (special) round CHAP (man) + E (last letter of constablE) | |
| 25 | Hard to penetrate leaf for virus (5) | PHAGE | H(ard) in PAGE (leaf) | |
| 26 | Oriental poet rested on river devouring oriental fish (7, 3 words) | LI TAI PO | LIT (rested) +PO (river) round AI (oriental fish) | |
| 27 | Beast‘s traumatic collapses when exposed (7) | TIMARAU | [(t)RAUMATI(c)]* | |
| 29 | In retrospect, flash dream? (6) | FANTOM | MO (flash) reversed FANT is unclued | |
| 30 | Plant that shelters another plant in old bit of Spain (6) | PESETA | PEA (plant) round SET (plant) | |
| 35 | Caesar shifted gal and discarded changeling (3) | AUF | ??? Suggestions welcome! | |
35D uses a Caesar cipher/code (Caesar shifted) of +20 to change ‘gal’ to ‘auf’. It wasn’t vital as the crossing letters give the answer anyway.
Thanks for the blog. I hadn’t noticed that Auf needed parsing, and never in a million years would I have got it anyway. Failed at the very last as well. I spotted Nessie and that led me to think that I was looking for things like Yetis, Sasquatches and Bunyips, not just ordinary words. Ah well…
An enjoyable puzzle but – 35d – really?! The brief look at Google for ‘Caesar cipher’ doesn’t even suggest a shift of 20, it can be any number. A frankly ludicrous clue.
Clues on the tricky side, needing a lot of help from the big red book. The unclued entries thanks for the most part to a handy Wiki page. 🙂 The final change was, thankfully, pretty apparent following on from that grid fill.
The usual profuse thanks to Shark and Hihoba. Tough clues, indeed, but this was one of the rare IQs where as light began to dawn I could hardly believe my luck – in 2006 I wrote a whole book on the Harry Potter phenomenon for Gollancz and still have a copy of Fantastic Beasts on the shelves. Which was just as well, since I’d forgotten QUINTAPED (first beast found in the grid) and ACROMANTULA.
As noted by others, 35D has to be AUF; I eventually came up with a different and no doubt wildly wrong rationalization for the wordplay. Augustus was one of the Caesars, in month form abbreviated to Aug, and the “shifted gal” bit could perhaps mean changing the G for gal(lon) to F for female (another meaning of gal).
A quick intervention – 6d is OOZING. (See sew^2 in Ch.)
@6 – I think OOPING works just as well:
oup or oop:
to bind round with thread or cord; to join.
bind:
to sew a border on to.
HG @ 6 – I don’t think it is as that would leave MOZING in the amended grid, which is not a word.
I’m staggered by the 35D clue. I’ve never heard of the Caesar cipher/code – it sounds a bit like the IBM/HAL code and I couldn’t find any mention of it in Chambers. Ba would cry “FOUL”!!
Hi @ 8: in fact Chambers has moze, a transitive verb meaning to gig, raise a nap on; the participle spelling isn’t given, but mozing (like dozing) seems a valid spelling. Having said that, I never considered ooping as a possibility.
Hihoba @8 My Chambers has “moze” as “vt to gig, raise a nap on”, and “mozing” seems a plausible form of this.
Hi @8: Chambers has “moze, vt to gig, raise a nap on”.
ken @7: I think OOZING is more direct for “sewing”, and also is dialect (indicated by “in places”) rather than Scottish (more likely to be clued by a hint such as “according to Tom Kitchin” or at “Murrayfield”).
It may be worth adding that I was surprised to find two 3 letter solutions at 13 and 35 across which each had one unchecked letter; fortunately, the controversial clue at 35D leads to a fully checked answer, or it would indeed have been insoluble.
HG @11: Thanks – I too was about to raise the dialect vs Scots point. Hoping very much that Shark will settle this one soon!
Nowhere near solving this one, partly because I was sure 5D was ‘chi’ – alternative spellings for chai and qi. Additionally, the combination of some very tricky parsing, and the obscurity of the words being spelt by the misprints, ensured this was a wipe-out. I looked in Chambers for words beginning with PC, but didn’t find Pcelt. In fact, I still can’t see it.
@14 Chambers has a tricky habit of listing certain hyphenated terms like P-Celt, I-beam and T-square under their first letter rather than where you’d expect.
I forgot to mention that like Neil @9 I also had 5d as Chi for quite a long time. A perfect alternative parse.
er, Neil @14.
I think that 25a should generate the letter U (Gaul, not Gael) since Irish and Scots Gaelic are both Q-Celtic languages, rather than P-Celtic. In this case the clue would be in error since it needs to generate the letter E. (If you trust Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_languages).
John Lowe @ 18: I had that initially, and only altered it because it has to generate ERKLING, not URKLING. However the Chambers definition of GAEL is Celt and you may be right about P and Q Celtic, but I’m happy to go along with the setter on this one!
I was pleased when I thought I had finally completed this hard puzzle correctly … so am now taken aback to see that OOZING/MOZING is not the preferred answer to 5d. Two rings = OO and zip = ZING, all seemed to be Chambers-acceptable… zip and zing both share the definition of sound of a bullet .., and, as HG says SEW = ooze, plus there is indeed a verb to MOZE.
Would JG/setter have accepted it as an alternative, if this had been a Listener ?
I too was totally foxed by AUF … taking GAL from the Caesar, Galba, seemed to be a good parsing start. But then stopped worrying because letters all checked, as did. def.
Colour me another OOZING… never even considered OOPING as a possibility!
OK, I’m persuaded by OOZING, though I think OOPING is OK too. I’ve changed the table, but don’t have time to change the diagram.
I found this easier than some appear to have done, though it took me a little while to track down the various beasts, partly because I missed the two clue bits to be fused through carelessness on my part.
I have to come to Shark’s defence re 35d. The clue seems fine to me. The Caesar shift code is very well known, and I was familiar with it as a mere schoolboy of 10.
I thought it a very enjoyable puzzle.
I got all of this except the FANT + ASTIC missing wordplay.
If Caran @1’s explanation for AUF is correct then this is possibly the worst clue I have ever seen! Someone needs to explain what part “and discarded” plays too.
Thank you Shark.
@24 The “discarded” flags AUF as an obsolete word, marked obs in Chambers.