Ah…the Christmas period – turkey, presents, carols, family, arguments, board games, arguments…and, of course, jigsaws! Followed, or accompanied, by more arguments… OK, this jigsaw came out on 31 December, so slightly post-Christmas, but what is to be GIVEN UP?
The preamble left me slightly trepidatious – is that a word? – but this was mitigated by the grid being ‘only’ 10×10, so surely fewer clues to be solved and blogged…
“Clues are presented in alphabetical order of their answers, which must be entered where they will fit. 25 clues contain an additional letter that must be GIVEN UP before solving; appropriately, these give three possible activities that may be affected. A thematic phrase (two words) could act as partial wordplay for the four remaining clues; accordingly, these clues consist of a definition and wordplay for the remaining letters only. Solvers must complete the unclued entry and highlight ten cells; together these give a cryptic indication of the theme. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.”
OK, so in this case fewer clues just means that a larger proportion are thematically affected, or unclued! And not only that, but they have no enumeration either…what am I getting in to here?…
In the last few years I have sort of forced/educated myself to love/solve these un-numbered alphabetic jigsaws, in the same way as I am still trying to teach/force myself to like olives…and needs must when they appear on my turn to blog…
The lack of enumeration didn’t help, but the presence of two sets of long answers crossing in the middle columns/rows seemed a likely entry point. And so it turned out when FREE LOVE and UNFOUNDED came from my first-ish run through the clues… They could only cross in one way, so a foothold. And RAREFY then probably had to cross the F of FREE LOVE, but I then took a wrong turn by putting AMYL down from the A of RAREFY, on the basis that there didn’t seem to be any other 4-letter A’s.
I then kind of settled into a rhythm of clue-checking, extra-letter-checking and tabulating lists of the available grid entries by length, in the white space below the grid on my printed copy.
Time passed…and at some point I had a three-dimensional PDM, made up of the puzzle title – what do we give up on 31-December?; the extra letters looking like they had a couple of words ending …ING; and the leading diagonal looking like it had ‘…OLU…’; so maybe we are looking at NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS, and I pencilled in the 10 letters of RESOLUTION in that diagonal.
Which meant, of course, that AMYL was in the wrong place, and I then spent a while trying to fit NEW YEAR into one of the 7-letter grid spaces…to no avail.
The fourth-dimension of penny-dropping came when I realised that EY??S could be EYRAS (spitting creatures), but the clue only led to a solitary ‘S’ – with EYRA being a ‘new’ YEAR. Which explained AERY where I had tried to put AMYL
And from there things gradually fell into place:
(NB. See comments below – HEAT should be HEAL)
The four thematic/partial clues are symmetrically arranged – a nice touch – and the NEW YEAR(‘s) RESOLUTION(s) from the extra letters turned out to be giving up SMOKING (never a failing of mine, I am proud to say), DRINKING (ahem, making up for the first one!), and OVER-EATING (ahem, again…)
Nice work all round – several layers of complication, some tough clueing, and nice surface readings – see below – and the lack of enumeration (previously mentioned) led to some initial apprehension, but these were a offset by a smaller-than-usual grid, and (with hindsight) a generous title and date of issue (serendipitous planning, Mr Editor/Setter!)
I enjoyed EMCEE on a personal level (;+>), but I wasn’t sure of the parsing of HET in HEAT (sorted by nmsindy in comments below), or why F had to be an ‘old’ show of force in FAYRE. Answers on a postcard, or in a comment below…
Now, back to those pesky olives…
| Clues | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Extra Letters | Solution | Clue (definition underlined) / Logic/Parsing |
| * | radicalS | AMYL | The setter’s kidnapped by vacuous amoral radicals / A_L (Amoral, vacated, or vacuous) around MY (the setter’s) |
| * | paMpers | A PEU PRES | Pampers lunatic around Brussels? Nearly (three words) / AP_PRES (anag, i.e. lunatic, of PAPERS) around EU (European Union, Brussels) |
| * | goOd | ASTERN | Good bird’s behind / AS (Norse god) + TERN (bird) |
| * | Kirk | BUGLE | Kirk gutted lame wild animal / BUG (irk) + LE (LamE, gutted) |
| * | D(EARY) ME | Small amount of money I lost – oh no! (two words) / D(I)ME (small amount of money, losing I) |
|
| * | pIer | DEICE | Remove frost from middle of pier and stamp around / D_ICE (stamp, surely DIE?) aroiund E (middle letter of pEr) |
| * | areNa | EASE | Relax in arena seat / hidden word in ‘arEA SEat’ |
| * | Groom | EDEN | Garden initially employed groom to work / E (initial letter of Employed) + DEN (study, room to work – or play!) |
| * | baseD | EMCEE | Presenter based end of item on community that’s on the up / E (base, logarithm) + M (end letter oof iteM) + CEE (EEC, European Economic Community, on the up) |
| * | (EYRA)S | Seven spitting creatures? / S (secen) |
|
| * | F(AYRE) | Show force to the old / F (force, not sure what ‘to the old’ does, as this is not an obsolete abbreviation?) |
|
| * | danceR | FREE LOVE | Fellow dancer with unlimited novel and generous offer from escort? (two words) / F (fellow) + REE L (dance) + (N)OVE(L) (novel, unlimited) |
| * | curIe | HEAL | Curie’s interminable suffering over second piece of radium / HE_L(L) (suffering, interminably) around A (second letter, or piece, of radium) ** see comments below. |
| * | takeN | LOOR | Throne taken that’s dear to Robert the Bruce? / LOO (throne, toilet) + R (recipe, Latin, take!) |
| * | monKey | MAAR | Monkey with regularly macabre depression / M (money) + AAR (regular letters from macabre) |
| * | basIs | OBSOLESCE | Become redundant on basis only Conservative’s adopted by London region / O (on) + B (bass) + SOLE (only) + N_E (London region), around (adopting) C (Conservative) |
| * | PL(AYER)S | In recession, record singular actors / PL (LP, record, in recession) + S (singular) |
|
| * | acNe | RAREFY | Thin queen with acne gets terribly fiery when one leaves / R (Regina, queen) + A (ace) + REFY (anag, i.e. terribly, of F(I)ERY, with I – one – leaving) |
| * | sonG | RASPS | Prince beginning to perform song grates / RAS (Ethiopian prince) + P (beginning letter of Perform) + S (son) |
| * | herO | RHYMED | Before date, my hero possibly wrote poetry? / RHTME (anag, i.e. possibly, of MY HER) + D (date) |
| * | diVed | RHYTON | Subsequent to ceremony broadcast, academic dived out for cup / RHYT (homophone, i.e. broadcast, of RITE, or ceremony) + (D)ON (academic, don, with D – died – removed) |
| * | usE | SCOG | Finally use gear in shelter / S (final letter of uS) + COG (gear) |
| * | stRokes | SDEIGN | Scorn strokes edging around to avoid eight from Cambridge? / S (stokes, scientific unit) + DEIGN (anag, i.e. around, of EDGIN(G) – without G – the eigth letter of cambridGe) |
| * | lugE | SEARCE | Following climax to Olympics, luge upset city showing strain / S (last letter, or climax, of olympicS) + EAR (lug) + CE (EC, postcode of the City of London, upset) |
| * | teA | TELE | Box informally with the French after tea / TE + LE (the, definite article, masculine, in French) |
| * | Terror | TYPO | Terror’s unknown in township next to Ohio / T_P (township) around Y (unknown quantity, mathematics) + O (Ohio) |
| * | unI | UNFOUNDED | Uni established without grounds / UN + FOUNDED (estblished) |
| * | puNs | UPSY | Puns riled yankee deeply / UPS (anag, i.e. rild, of PUS) + Y (Yankee, NATO/phonetic alphabet) |
| * | agoG | YORE | Castle perhaps in revolution, with earl agog? / YOR (Roy Castle – UK TV personality, in revolution) + E (earl) |
I wonder if it should be HEAL (cure) with HEL(L) around A
Thanks, nmsindy – much more sensible parsing, and a better definition for ‘cure’
Cue mortified face-palm – bang goes the chance of a pen this week!
I will update the blog, but life is too short to go and re-do the animation…