The fourth Inquisitor offered jointly by eXt(ternal + Serp)ent.
Preamble: Each clue contains a misprint of one letter; the pairs of incorrect and correct letters, in clue order, spell out four lines of verse explaining why the misprints went unnoticed. One word of seven letters, missing from the verse, should be highlighted in the completed grid.
I thought that this was going to be really difficult, given we didn’t know if any misprint was in the main definition, a definition part of the wordplay, an anagram indicator, a pointer to the first/last/middle letters of a word … plus I solved only four across clues on the first pass. But … three of those were top left, which gave me a cracking start on the early down clues, so I nipped back to the acrosses then back to the downs, and quite soon I had a fair bit of the upper left triangle of the grid filled. Indeed, I didn’t get to many of the later down clues (or revisit the across ones for lower right entries) until I was some way through the puzzle.
The pairs of incorrect and correct letters were beginning to make sense with “EYE HAVE A SPELLING” to which I succumbed by Googling the phrase. Their seam two bee a phew variance of this rime but the won hear is:
Eye have a spelling chequer /
It came with my pea sea /
It plane lea marques four my revue /
Mist aches I can knot sea.
CHEQUER was clearly missing from our version, but could be found in the fourth row up from the bottom. And the pairs of letters revealed by the verse helped hugely to sort out the remaining clues.
Not much more to say really – quite a short blog for me. So, not as hard as I first feared, but not a doddle either. Thanks to both bits of eXtent for this weekend diversion.
{Somewhat quizzical about the “(5-4)” entry length indication in 35a – see below.}
Nearly forgot: the title could be ‘corrected’ to Flaws.
With reference to the clue for 35 across, there is a note from the editor alongside the published solution to this puzzle: “One, that letter-counts only flag multiple-word answers [eg 8 down in this puzzle]; two, that Chambers Dictionary and ODE are our stated word references – preambles should acknowledge alternatives that neither supports. A double apology, then. Chambers gives SMARTARSE as one word.”
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Clue [✗] ✓ | ✗✓ | Answer | Wordplay |
| 1 | Leaders of action group cop[e]y, hosting adult feasts celebrating love (6) | E Y | AGAPAE | A(ction) G(roup) APE (copy) around A(dult) |
| 6 | Packed ric[e]h tight (6) | E H | LOADED | triple definition |
| 10 | [A]Vim of writer undergoing stomach-turning experience (4) | A V | BRIO | BIRO (writer) with middle letters reversed |
| 12 | Experience loss of motor control when a que[e]an gets excited about lap dancing (9) | E A | AQUAPLANE | [A QUEAN]* around [LAP]* |
| 14 | Loss of concentration as academician leaves expansion, [s]packed by university (8) | S P | DILUTION | DILUTION (expansion) ¬ A(cademician) around U(niversity) |
| 15 | Me[e]lting genius, dropping ecstasy and taking drugs (5) | E L | USING | [GENIUS]* ¬ E(cstasy) |
| 16 | Cross because girlfriend’s ta[l]il (4) | L I | FORD | FOR (because) (girlfrien)D |
| 17 | One pound bo[n]gus actor receives for those that clapped (7) | N G | CROTALA | A (one) L (pound) in [ACTOR]* |
| 19 | Boss, having lost case, accepts trade union with men[i]tal keenness (6) | I T | ASTUTE | (m)ASTE(r) (boss) around TU (trade union) |
| 21 | One giving server something perhaps consisting of spe[c]ak on a bit of pumpernickel (8) | C A | INPUTTER | IN (consisting of) UTTER (speak) around P(umpernickel) |
| 23 | One about to stor[m]e Biblical kingdom’s ancient masonry (8) | M E | ISODOMON | I (one) ON (about) around SODOM (Biblical kingdom) |
| 27 | Pressure on ship tra[w]iling strait (6) | W I | STRESS | RE (on) SS (ship) after ST(rait) |
| 29 | S[t]hunning in the morning, chameleon twisted round rung on the ladder (7) | T H | ECHELON | [CHAMELEON]* ¬ AM (in the morning) |
| 31 | Mischievous children taking ja[m]y from jar first (4) | M Y | ARCH | JAR ¬ J(ay) before CH(ildren) |
| 32 | Raised section of grid delaying grand [p]elan’s introduction (5) | P E | RIDGE | GRID with G(rand) moved later E(lan) |
| 34 | Worthless foreign [a]sides to Azeri saint wear purple (8) | A S | MAUVAISE | A(zer)I S(aint) in MAUVE (purple) |
| 35 | Know-all confused m[e]are stars (5-4) {It’s unusual to indicate hyphenated entries …} |
E A | SMARTARSE | [MARE STARS]* {… & Chambers does not give this as hyphenated anyway} |
| 36 | Constant decay of uranium and erbium [i]tons (4) | I T | TRUE | [U(ranium) ER(bium) T(ons)]* |
| 37 | Make public facts about [p]let shop (6) | P L | OUTLET | OUT (make public facts about) LET |
| 38 | Interminable te[a]nsing about Government standard-bearer (6) | A N | ENSIGN | (t)ENSIN(g) around G(overnment) |
| Down | No. | Clue [✗] ✓ | ✗✓ | Answer | Wordplay |
| 1 | Take away co[e]ld content in mudbath to writhe around (6) | E L | ABDUCT | [C(old) (m)UDBAT(h)]* |
| 2 | Bl[e]and colour, navy having been scratched from beams (4) | E A | GRIS | GRINS (beams) ¬ N(avy) |
| 3 | [M]Aimed in confines of theatre within school (7) | M A | POINTED | IN T(heatr)E in POD (school) |
| 4 | Just the French upset after start of [r]quin in European Union (5) | R Q | EQUAL | LA< (the, Fr) after Q(uin) in EU (European Union) |
| 5 | Get b[u]etter of room at venue smeared round uniform (12) | U E | OUTMANOEUVRE | [ROOM AT VENUE]* around U(niform) |
| 6 | Dog li[s]fted originally as killer is actually liability… (5) | S F | LAIKA | A(s) K(iller) I(s) A(ctually) L(iability) all< |
| 7 | …work on problem to catch huge beast with po[o]uch (7) | O U | OPOSSUM | OP (work) SUM (problem) around OS (outsize, huge) |
| 8 | Ti[r]me away from home in Bermuda, you two (6, 2 words) | R M | DAY OUT | (Bermu)DA YOU T(wo) |
| 9 | Unproductive [y]rear of trade breaks relative (4) | Y R | DEAD | (trad)E in DAD (relative) |
| 11 | Fool institute with great deal of [e]vase (5) | E V | IDIOT | I(nstitute) DIOT(a) (vase) |
| 13 | Hispanic term for American n[u]et or nuts (negative) (7) | U E | NORTEÑO | [NET OR]* NO (negative) |
| 18 | Da[m]is soldiers erected, second with unfinished top (7) | M I | ROSTRUM | OR< (other ranks, soldiers) S(econd) TRUM(p) |
| 20 | Blooming bone in no[s]te irritated (7) | S T | ROSEATE | OS (bone) in RE (note) ATE irritated |
| 22 | Religious people moved this se[a]ct, ignoring Catholic (7) | A C | THEISTS | [THIS SECT]* ¬ (C)atholic |
| 24 | Nothing right, [h]eating tea garden no longer being used (6) | H E | ORCHAT | O (0, nothing) R(igh)T around CHA (tea) |
| 25 | Sen[s]ior linking two European articles (5) | S I | ELDER | EL (the, Sp) DER (the, Ger) |
| 26 | Wrinkled nun going mad, clo[c]aking woman that gave into temptation (6) | C A | UNEVEN | [NUN]* around EVE (woman … temptation) |
| 28 | Group of soldiers abandoning du[n]ke, time is short (5) | N K | SQUAT | SQUAD (group of soldiers) ¬ D(uke) T(ime) |
| 30 | Stop blo[n]od type interrupting church service, being vacant (5) | N O | CEASE | A (blood type) in CE (church) S(ervic)E |
| 31 | Being involved in choral society in [t]same manner (4) | T S | ALSO | (chor)AL SO(ciety) |
| 33 | Swig good be[e]ar (4) | E A | GLUG | G(ood) LUG (bear) |
|
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I spotted CHEQUER in my nearly finished grid, and googled MARQUES and FOUR to obtain the verse. Also tidied up the missing lights using the newly revealed pairs of letters.
Enjoyable, and as you say fairly straightforward. None of the various versions of the verse I found on-line seemed to agree with each other, or with eXtent’s version either, but it didn’t matter because the word we needed was clear enough.
Like HolyGhost and NNI, I used the verse, once found, to resolve some unfilled or unexplained clues prior to completion.
I was stuck for a while on the left of the grid, and I found myself in the rather unlucky position of hardly being able to string two words together in the poem. It was ROSTRUM that unlocked that segment, and I really enjoyed discovering those crazy rhyming lines that I had never come across before.
Excellent clues throughout, as I am getting accustomed to on my Inquisitor journey.
Many thanks to eXtent and HolyGhost.
Lots of fun, many thanks to the eXtent partnership. Like NNI @1, googling MARQUES FOUR was my way in to the verse.
Very impressive to engineer clues that provided each letter pair, in the correct sequence.
Very enjoyable. Luckily I had seen the verse before so I twigged what was going on fairly early. That helped a lot with completing the grid and finding the misprints. Thanks all.
Another very good inquisitor, and one where, untypically, I had no queries about the parsing. What made it tricky – I got to the top left late in the day – was the nonsense, so progress didn’t speed things. Like others, succumbed to google, which greatly helped the run-in.
Many thanks to eXtent and HolyGhost.
Very enjoyable! Despite there being so many variations of the verse quoted online, there was absolutely no doubt about what was required. Nice to finish a puzzle without that sneaking suspicion that I’ve missed something!
Agree it was an enjoyable puzzle. Was conf conf ident about Eye Have A Spelling and Marques so kinda worked out what was going on (perhaps helped by the recent IQ or Listener that also made extensive use of homophones) and resolved not to just look it up…. But the resolve faded quite quickly as the incongruity of the combinations made them hard to deduce so looked it up! Kudos to anyone who pieced it together in full.
A belated comment, having only recently returned from holiday.
I hadn’t even thought to Google on this and I’m pleased I didn’t – a brilliant PDM when it came. For a long while the message seemed impenetrable, with apparently random combinations of words gradually emerging. I’d spotted CHEQUER in the grid as a likely missing word and when I eventually found SPELLING in the verse to go with it everything suddenly became clear.
Challenging but greatly enjoyable. It felt a similar experience to solving the previous two puzzles, but if anything the best of the three. My only slight disappointment was discovering, on reading this blog, that the verse was not original, though so much else to admire in the construction.