[If you’re attending York S&B please see comments 32&33] - here
Hi everyone. I very much enjoyed rising to the challenge and sniffing out the solution to this puzzle. Thanks Ranunculus!
The preamble reads:
The definitions in nine across and nine down clues contain a misprinted letter which must be corrected before solving; in clue order, the incorrect letters provide two people who contributed to works with A HUMAN CONNECTION. In eight instances, the last letter of an entry matches the last letter of its clue; one checked letter of each such entry must be thematically modified – this may produce a non-word, but all other entries in the final grid are real words; newly-introduced letters could spell MIND BURN. Solvers must highlight an entry in the grid which links the themes. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.
A short introduction from me this week. I solved on the day, writing up the parsing, as I went along, but neglected to write anything else until remembering at the last minute that we now publish the full blogs a couple of days earlier.
As I recall I filled in most of the grid before identifying the names given by the misprints:
BO GOLDMAN and BRONOWSKI
(On identifying the eight clues in which letters need to be changed, I highlighted them for ease of reference and have retained this in the grid below, although not needed for the solution.)
Plenty of works by Bo Goldman to choose from, but Jacob Bronowski is best known for the TV series The Ascent of Man. Seeing the feminine names in the across clues, I took another look at the downs and spotted that a letter change would produce male names, reversed. Which confirmed The Ascent of Man.
The Bo Goldman work was now not hard to track down: Scent of a Woman, and sure enough, single letter changes to our ladies revealed their perfume.
With men ascending men and fragrant women, we have our HUMAN CONNECTION, and the entry to highlight is of course ASCENT.
| Clue No | ANSWER | Clue with definition underlined | |
| Explanation, with quoted indicators in italics and letters appearing in the ANSWER capitalised and emboldened | |||
| Across | |||
| 1a | ROSETTA | Origin of remarkable old stone found around Egypt area? (7) | |
| The first letter (origin) of Remarkable + O (old) + ST (stone) found around ET (Egypt), followed by A (area) | |||
| 6a | RAVEL | [B]<t>angle going round ankle, various clasps (5) | B |
| In reverse (going round), ankLE VARious contains (clasps) the answer | |||
| 10a | CREEPER | Church securing case of rouge by way of vin[o]<e>? (7) | O |
| CE (church) containing (securing) the outer letters (case) of RougE + PER (by way of) | |||
| 12a | PALOMA | Faith perhaps shown in Mao mistakenly by China (6) | |
| MAO anagrammed (mistakenly) next to (by) PAL (China) | |||
| 13a | PRAM | Milkman’s cart present in the morning (4) | |
| PR (present) + AM (in the morning) | |||
| 14a | PLATE | Priest and others knocked back la[g]<y>er (5) | G |
| P (priest) + ET AL (and others) reversed (knocked back) | |||
| 15a | TRUISM | Bromide is put in teacher’s first drink (6) | |
| IS put in Teacher’s first letter and RUM (drink) | |||
| 16a | ESTELLE | In France, is she? (7) | |
| French words for (in France) is – EST – and she – ELLE | |||
| 20a | RAETIAN | Take aged vessel containing article from Roman province (7) | |
| R (take – recipe, Latin) + AE (aged – ae. = aetatis, Latin) + TIN (vessel) containing A (article) | |||
| 23a | SEARS | Burns discharged Smithers, grabbing attention (5) | |
| SmitherS without inner letters (discharged …) containing (grabbing) EAR (attention) | |||
| 24a | TRAIT | Sharp pull pinching rear of wearer a particular characteristic of th[o]<i>ng (5) | O |
| TIT (sharp pull) containing (pinching) the last letter (rear) of weareR and A | |||
| 25a | STARRED | Featured prominently in [l]<c>ast Republican blast, turning back on lone Democrat (7) | L |
| R (Republican) and RATS (blast) reversed (turning) + the last letter of (back on) lonE + D (Democrat) | |||
| 28a | COLLEGE | Jail Belfast girl mainly smuggling gold but not getting on (7) | |
| All but the last letter of (… mainly) COLLEEn (Belfast girl) containing (smuggling) G[old] but without (not) OLD (getting on) | |||
| 31a | ENTIRE | [D]<f>ull resort short of clubs one’s welcomed into (6) | D |
| [c]ENTRE (resort) without (short of) C (clubs), into which I (one) is inserted (welcomed into) | |||
| 32a | GAMBA | Government medical body doing U-turn accepted early instrument (5) | |
| G (government) BMA (medical body) reversed (doing U-turn) + A (accepted) | |||
| 35a | MEAT | In part, blame a toxic substance (4) | |
| In part, blaME A Toxic | |||
| 36a | HONOUR | Respect occasion, embracing dissident voter (6) | |
| HOUR (occasion) around (embracing) NO (dissident voter) | |||
| 37a | AVERTED | [M]<p>arried, say, young ruffian in Edwardian dress (7) | M |
| AVER (say) + TED (young ruffian in Edwardian dress) | |||
| 38a | READY | All s[a]<e>t about in tidy yard (5) | A |
| A (about) in RED (tidy) + Y (yard) | |||
| 39a | WRESTLE | Shot of gin on the rocks transformed sweltering [n]<f>ight (7) | N |
| Without (shot of) an anagram of (… on the rocks) GIN, an anagram of (transformed) SWELTER[ing] | |||
| Down | |||
| 1d | RIPPER | More mature crowds heading for popular Australian [b]<p>each (6) | B |
| RIPER (more mature) contains (crowds) the first letter of (heading for) Popular | |||
| 2d | ORAL | [R]<s>aid offering an important lesson – millions stolen (4) | R |
| [m]ORAL (an important lesson) with M (millions) removed (stolen) | |||
| 3d | SOLA | Plant producing pithlike stems, also nuts (4) | |
| ALSO anagrammed (nuts) | |||
| 4d | EMOTE | English equivalent of ‘speck’ – ham (5) | |
| E (English) + MOTE (equivalent of ‘speck’) | |||
| 5d | TRAWL | Wide craft capsized on Lake Com[o]<b> (5) | O |
| W (wide) and ART (craft) reversed (capsized) preceding (on) L (lake) | |||
| 6d | REPRISAL | Getting own ba[n]<c>k’s curt answer about right savings account (8) | N |
| All but the last letter of (curt) REPLy (answer) around (about) R (right) and ISA (savings account) | |||
| 7d | APPUI | Apparent confusion surrounding United’s defensive support (5) | |
| AP (apparent) + PI (confusion) surrounding U (united) | |||
| 8d | ERASURE | Queen, a fine synth-pop act? (7) | |
| ER (queen) + A + SURE (fine) | |||
| 9d | LEMMAS | ‘Gutted’ Lewis Hamilton possibly gets into arguments (6) | |
| LewiS without inner letters (gutted …) with the insertion of (… gets into) EMMA (Hamilton possibly) | |||
| 11d | EXTENT | Reach finals of dance contest, receiving one 10 after another (6) | |
| The last letters (finals) of dancE and contesT containing (receiving) X TEN (one 10 after another) | |||
| 17d | TEAL | D[o]<u>ck leaves curl at the end (4) | O |
| TEA (leaves) + curL at the end | |||
| 18d | LITERARY | Time and energy to replace book in bibliophile’s collection of books (8) | |
| T (time) and E (energy) replace B (book) in LI[b]RARY (bibliophile’s collection) | |||
| 19d | CARE | Charge lecturer dismissed from Cambridge college (4) | |
| L (lecturer) removed from (dismissed from) C[l]ARE (Cambridge college) | |||
| 21d | ARANEAE | One Indian queen welcoming ace web designers (7) | |
| A (one) + RANEE (Indian queen) containing (welcoming) A (ace) | |||
| 22d | ASCENT | [W]<r>ise beginning to develop striking top note (6) | W |
| [n]ASCENT (beginning to develop) without (striking) the first (top) N (note) | |||
| 24d | TREMOR | Tom and Jerry, unlimited suffering making you shudder (6) | |
| TOM and jERRY without the outer letters (unlimited) anagrammed (suffering) | |||
| 26d | DEARIE | Treasure: diamonds, rum, even bits of pirate gear (6) | |
| D (diamonds) + an anagram of (rum) even letters of pIrAtE gEaR | |||
| 27d | SITED | Scratching backside on tub – bidet’s badly positioned (5) | |
| Without (scratching) the last letter (backside) of tuB, [b]IDET’S anagrammed (badly) | |||
| 29d | OCHER | Ordinary pop diva, sort of [s]<p>aint to Americans (5) | S |
| O (ordinary) + CHER (pop diva) | |||
| 30d | LANES | Ways to shut lifts holding a large number (5) | |
| SEAL (to shut) is reversed (lifts) containing (holding) N (a large number) | |||
| 33d | MOOT | Mary’s opening extremely elevated discussion of hypothetical ca[k]<s>e (4) | K |
| Mary’s first letter (opening) + the reversal of (… elevated) TOO (extremely) | |||
| 34d | BULL | Round metal ornament lacking a str[i]<o>ng (4) | I |
| BULL[a] (round metal ornament) lacking A | |||
It took me a long time to fill the grid, but at least when I had done so I had a complete and accurate set of 18 letters making one familiar name and one that was unfamiliar. Also, of course, I knew which were the eight words to be changed.
I readily found ASCENT, from its obvious connection to Bronowski, and it wasn’t hard to find a SCENT on looking up Bo Goldman. But yesterday, when I tried to complete this puzzle, I never thought to use ‘ascent’ in that way, or to use ‘scent’ rather than ‘woman’ for the other words, so I missed out on that phase.
Thanks to Ranunculus and Kitty.
I really enjoyed this puzzle – one of my favourites this year. I thought the clues were great and the linking of the 2 ‘scents’ was inspired. Unlike Alan neither of the names was familiar to me so I needed some googling to get me to the end. The ascending men were easier to spot than the changes to the female names for me – my initial idea was that they would all change to different perfumes. I think Ranunculus has definitely created some new and interesting first names there!
Thanks to both Kitty & Ranunculus.
We were licky in that we found the Bronowski but had never heard of Bo Goldman so this was a learning experience.Thanks to Ranunculus and Kitty.
I may have said this before: I don’t buy the Sunday Telegraph often but, when I do, this puzzle is generally a very enjoyable test, as on this occasion. An ingenious ‘twist’ both for the across women and for the down (or up) men. So, renewed thanks to those who put pressure on the paper a few months ago when EV seemed to be under threat. Many thanks to setter and blogger.
Not having come across Goldman, still less Bo, it took me a while to see what name was emerging. Thereafter it wasn’t immediately clear to me that the changes would turn the relevant entry (rather than a crossing entry) into a nonword, although in retrospect that does seem fairly indicated by the preamble wording. An imaginative idea – it’s always good to see twin themes in a puzzle. And I do firmly approve of puzzles which go the extra mile to tell you where to look in a grid, especially if (as here) the gimmick is a novel one. Thanks to setter and blogger
Yes – I agree with Ifor. It was very helpful of Ranunculus to highlight which entries were going to be changed (and to supply the necessary letters as well).
My thanks to all who attempted the puzzle (in particular those who have posted comments) and to Kitty for the blog – I can’t remember a blog in which my intended parsings were so accurately reflected.
An entertaining combination of themes. As with others above, I was grateful for the internet in explaining the Goldman part; at least I’d heard of the other person. The amended entries were amusing and cleverly done (also elegantly separated between across and down entries) and I was also tickled by the somewhat stretched connection between the two. Particularly liked the clue to 4 down. Thanks to Ranunculus for the enjoyment and to Kitty for the blog.
Really enjoyed this excellent puzzle, with some clever ideas. Thanks Ranunculus and Kitty.