Inquisitor 1678: Consumption by Eclogue

While writing this blog, I have just heard the bad news about the Christmas lockdown! As this will come out just after Christmas and just before New Year, may I wish everyone on behalf of myself and Ho a better 2021 than 2020 with some return to normality, and hope that your Christmas was safe, Covid-free and enlivened by suitable crossword fare.

My last blog concerned the “Withnail and I” puzzle where I guessed the theme long before finishing the grid. This time, however Eclogue had me puzzling over a largely filled grid for quite a time before realising that the theme involved the consumption of a particular food item in a film that I had never seen and knew little about, other than its title! The rubric read: Single extraneous letters generated by the wordplay in all clues spell in clue order two thematic quotations: one in full, one in part (including a cryptic indication) which alludes to the consumption affecting ten entries, which is also reflected in the wordplay of the respective clues. Five normal thematic solutions (23 cells in total) must be highlighted. Enumeration refers to grid entries; indications that an answer is more than one word refer to the defined solution.

So two quotations, extra letters in every clue and something extra about 10 clues.

I waded in, couldn’t do either of the clues across the top, but did rather better with many of the other clues, making reasonable, if slow, progress.

Though the extra letters appeared in many clues, I couldn’t make any sense of them until I had almost finished – a few missing and an error or two made the quotations pretty indecipherable. The first clear indication of the theme came at 33D when I realised that the answer (SPOON) didn’t fit the 2 words indication, so it must be SOUP, TEA, DESERT, TABLE etc. SPOON. I then found that 23D seemed to indicate BOOTLEGS to fit the space, but that didn’t fit the grammar of the clue, which indicates BOOTLEGGERS. However, the removal (consumption!) of the EGG would leave a non-word which fit the space. I still couldn’t make the resulting BOOTLERS fit the clue, until, while writing this blog, I realised that OR was a logic circuit. Anyway, this helped me to identify the spoon as an EGG SPOON and I soon located eight of the eggless answers in the periphery. They are, in full, 1a BANDYLEGGED, 7a SKEGGER, 10d REGGAES, 23d BOOTLEGGERS, 44a ARPEGGIONES, 43a SEGGARS, 34d VEGGIES, 1d BEGGAR’S LICE. Symmetrically placed are the aforementioned 33d EGG SPOON and 3d NEST EGGS to make up the 10 mentioned in the rubric. It took me a while to understand the bit of the rubric which states – affecting ten entries, which is also reflected in the wordplay of the respective clues. The word EGG is not clued at all in the wordplay, which I suppose fulfils the criterion.

So on to the quotations. I had some errors and omissions but did, however, have enough letters to locate the words FAILURE and COMMUNICATE, so I Googled “failure communicate” and one of Google’s invaluable suggestions was “failure to communicate cool hand luke”. I recognised the film title and recollected that the words COOL, HAND and LUKE had been entries in the grid – clearly 12 of the 23 letters we had to highlight. Another 11 to go. While reading about the film I came across this clip on YouTube, the “famous” EGG eating scene (though I’d never heard of it). The quotes relating to the film are “WHAT WE’VE GOT HERE IS A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE” and “NO MAN CAN EAT FIFTY EGGS” I had letters for most of these, and a bit of reverse engineering gave me most of the missing letters, but at 38d, ‘I’m surprised that will do approximately (4, 2 words)’ I had OR SO, which I assumed would be COR (I’m surprised) and SO (that will do), but that would leave the second quote, which was the one in part (including a cryptic indication), as NO MAN CAN EAT C  which was 50 too many. It was clear that the EGGS were to be “consumed” – i.e. omitted – but what of the number. Well LOR can also mean “I’m surprised”, and gives us L, a Roman numeral for 50, at the end giving NO MAN CAN EAT L.

While searching for COOL HAND LUKE to highlight the letters I came across NEWMAN at 18a. Now the main protagonists in the film are Luke, played by Paul Newman and Dragline, played by George KENNEDY whose name appears at 8d. There are two overlapping letters, so this totals 23 characters to highlight as per instruction.

Job done. I found a few of the clues pretty impenetrable, Eclogue, but parsed them all in the end. An excellent grid construction and a most enjoyable solve. Thank you.

P.S. While proof-reading this blog, 43a (SEGGARS) reminded Ho of the old “What’s my Line?” occupation a saggar-maker’s bottom-knocker.