Skylark, the third of four female setters in Ladies’ month (although this July has five Saturdays so there’s room for one more).
Preamble: Symmetrical grid entries contain the endings of four lines of a rhyme. Corrected single misprints in thirty-three clues generate subsequent endings – except for one, a coward, who’s fled. Solvers should tempt her back into the completed grid by changing two letters of one entry, using a synonym for Skylark. Finally highlight the coward plus twelve followers, lying vertically or horizontally in the grid (58 cells).
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the use of “corrected misprints“. If literal needs to be corrected to liberal, “t” is the misprint and “b” is the correction, but either could be the “corrected misprint“. If the former, then use simply “misprint” and for the latter use “correction” – that way there’s no ambiguity. OK, moan over.
Strangely, I solved what seemed like every other across clue almost at a glance and then filled in with many intersecting down answers. This made for a grid with two rather dense areas (top left & bottom right) and two rather sparse patches. But I chipped away at it and before too long felt I had enough corrections to hazard a guess at COURTING, KITCHEN, EMPTY. This wasn’t enough for me, but plenty for Google.
One, two, Buckle my SHOE;
Three, four, Knock at the DOOR;
Five, six, Pick up STICKS;
Seven, eight, Lay them STRAIGHT;
Nine, ten, A big fat HEN;
Eleven, twelve, Dig and DELVE;
Thirteen, fourteen, Maids A-COURTING;
Fifteen, sixteen, Maids in the KITCHEN;
Seventeen, eighteen, Maids in WAITING;
Nineteen, twenty, My plate’s EMPTY.
The first four are in the grid, the last five come from the corrections; the HEN is missing.
Now onto the endgame. We replace the central entry 24a FEN by HEN, and make a further change to 16d so it now reads AUTHOR, namely Skylark. Then comes the head-scratching and grid-staring. What to make of followers? Possibly making too much of the puzzle’s title Coward (for some reason not concluding that that simply referred to HEN), and assuming that chicks followed their mother, I spent a chunk of Monday evening searching for chickens in the grid. Early Tuesday evening in frustration (life is too short), I emailed my fellow bloggers and Hi(hoba) said that they were simply words that followed HEN in Chambers. (“Is that it?” I asked myself.) So, we look through the dictionary entry and see what gives and we find BIT, COURT, DRIVER, FLESH, HEARTED, HOUSE, PADDLE, PARTY, PECK, PEN, WIFE, WITTED.
Sorry Skylark, a bit underwhelmed. The solve was OK, but I just didn’t twig the endgame. (PS A bit of repetition: OR was clued as gold twice.)
Actually, that’s somewhat short of generous. There’s a lot of thematic material here: the first four endings are pleasingly symmetrical and pairwise abutting, the HEN takes centre stage, and all of the 12 followers are either whole or part entries – none of them cross bars. So keep up the good work, Skylark, and don’t be dispirited by comments from an old grump.
| No. | Clue ✓[✗] | ✓ | Answer | Wordplay |
| Across | ||||
| 1 | Company’s divid[n]e year (5) | D | PARTY | PART (divide) Y(ear) |
| 5 | Footwear pe[a]ckers recalled quarrel before (8, 2 words) | E | TAP SHOES | HOES (peckers) after SPAT< (quarrel) |
| 12 | Stroll back without barrel[d] woman (4) | L | ELMA | AMBLE< (stroll) ¬ B(arrel) |
| 13 | Hit American quarter inv[s]erting tunnel (5) | V | QANAT | TAN (hit) A(merican) Q(uarter) all< |
| 15 | One of ten groups restricts pe[a]ck which can be resolved (9) | E | DECIDABLE | DECILE (one of ten groups) around DAB (peck) |
| 17 | Holiday taking in Italy, ta[o]re back inspired (5) | A | VATIC | VAC around I(taly) + T(are) both< |
| 18 | Stay to the end, the French thic[n]k (7, 2 words) | C | LAST OUT | LA (the, Fr) STOUT (thick) |
| 19 | Train regularly, jerk pole (6) | RIPECK | (t)R(a)I(n) PECK (jerk) | |
| 20 | Key cast enters aisle to[i]ttering (9) | O | ESSENTIAL | SENT (cast) in [AISLE]* |
| 22 | Yokel’s industrious pu[o]ny fails to start following daughter (5) | U | DEEDY | (w)EEDY (puny) after D(aughter) |
| 24 | Ir[c]on’s by northern bog (3) | R | FEN | FE (iron) N(orthern) |
| 25 | Sheba at[s] hostess conceals party (5) | T | BA’ATH | (She)BA AT H(ostess) |
| 30 | Needle-case handle is held by method current supervisor ultimately ignored (9) | HOUSEWIFE | USE (handle) in HOW (method) RIFE (current) ¬ (superviso)R | |
| 32 | Independent occupies Ed’s dri[a]fter disregarding old trucker (6) | I | DRIVER | I(ndependent) in DROVER (drifter, Spenser) ¬ O(ld) |
| 33 | Girl’s man[p] covering space (7) | N | FENELLA | FELLA (man) around EN (space) |
| 34 | Frustrated female leaves, tipsy (5) | OILED | FOILED (frustrated) ¬ F(emale) | |
| 38 | Public trial’s over, cag[f]e heard on radio (9, 2 words) | G | OPEN COURT | O(ver) PEN (cage) COURT (homophone CAUGHT, heard) |
| 39 | Rank[g] about English aquatic plant (5) | K | REATE | RATE (rank) around about E(nglish) |
| 40 | So far curi[s]e large cells (4) | I | ASCI | AS (so far) CI (Curie) |
| 41 | Frank, quiet before, interrupts fit[b] (8) | T | STRAIGHT | ST (quiet) A (ante, before) in RIGHT (fit) |
| 42 | Tried to make better c[b]ook, bard’s announced (5) | C | DOSED | DO (cook) SED (said, Milton) |
| Down | ||||
| 1 | H[S]ome duke, escorted, walked unsteadily (7) | H | PADDLED | PAD (home) D(uke) LED (escorted) |
| 2 | Regions including a hundred trees (6) | ARECAS | AREAS (regions) around C (hundred) | |
| 3 | Ancient tax collected, thatching’s adjourned in Virginia (8) | RECESSED | CESS (tax, obs) in REED (thatching) | |
| 4 | Ed’s to go e[l]ast, rural dairymaid’s upset (4) | E | YEDE | E(ast) DEY (dairymaid) all< |
| 6 | Amateur coin[l]’s scope (5) | N | AMBIT | AM(ateur) BIT (coin) |
| 7 | Left supporting partner’s curtain (4) | PALL | L(eft) after PAL (partner) | |
| 8 | Fools outside sw[l]ing over antique goblets (6) | W | HANAPS | HAS (fools) around PAN< (swing) |
| 9 | Soprano intercepts regarding tenor to locals once (4) | ONST | S(oprano) in ON (regarding) T(enor) | |
| 10 | Second bea[s]t society stays (6) | A | STICKS | S(econd) TICK (beat) S(ociety) |
| 11 | With understanding Wi[a]de belonged, though not at first (6) | I | WITTED | W(ide) (f)ITTED (belonged) |
| 14 | Regularly vain, slit[p] crossing island’s dam (6) | T | ANICUT | (v)A(i)N CUT (slit) around (island) |
| 16 | Try to get place following Gold (6, 2 words) | PUT FOR | PUT (place) F(ollowing) OR (gold) | |
| 19 | Si[a]ck lancers abandoning conservative old Scot’s search for stolen goods (6) | I | RANSEL | [LANCERS]* ¬ C(onservative) |
| 21 | Pain[d] during contests, helps to reduce debts (8) | N | BAILOUTS | AIL (pain) in BOUTS (contests) |
| 23 | Earl and prince g[m]et up, captivated in France (6) | G | ÉPRISE | E(arl) P(rince) RISE (get up) |
| 26 | Accepted fre[a]t is upset about old caterpillars (6) | E | AWETOS | A(ccepted) STEW< (fret) around O(ld) |
| 27 | Warmed housing republican loved (7) | HEARTED | HEATED (warmed) around R(epublican) | |
| 28 | Once at the entrance clutching gold, pick up drink (6) | ADOORS | OR (gold) in SODA< (drink) | |
| 29 | Academy m[w]atch holy texts (6) | M | AVESTA | A(cademy) VESTA (match) |
| 31 | Fine learning about Australian regions’ vegetation (6) | FLORAE | F(ine) LORE (learning) around A(ustralian) | |
| 33 | P[B]ert abandons recipe for starter of lean meat (5) | P | FLESH | FRESH (pert) with R(ecipe) replaced by L(ean) |
| 35 | Who can’t be trusted to raise bant[n]er (4) | T | LIAR | RAIL (banter) |
| 36 | Clary[e] maybe mostly welcomes soft pasta among friends (4) | Y | SPAG | SAG(e) (clary) around P (soft) |
| 37 | Sharp corps cuts funding (4) | ACID | C(orps) in AID (funding) | |
The preamble led me to think that we had to change two consecutive letters to “ME”. Thus I half-heartedly changed QANAT to MENAT.
I think that the preamble made this puzzle, as you say, underwhelming.
Thanks anyway to S and HG
Many thanks to Skylark and HG. My grid-filling experience was very similar, with a bit of extra luck in that I’d recently read the Agatha Christie mystery whose title is the first line of that nursery rhyme. After finding the HEN there was a long blank pause before PARTY suggested HEN PARTY. That several other “followers” were part-entries seemed fairly hinted at by the placement of the first two rhyme words in the grid. No grumpiness here!
This has to go down as a DNF for me, as like HolyGhost, the endgame didn’t exactly jump out and hit me either. Note to self – must try harder.
I was struggling with the top right, but had just enough words for my search engine to point me to the rhyme. I really enjoyed the way things unravelled (or ravelled?) from there. I confess I never saw ‘author’ (so didn’t properly finish), but almost as soon as I saw ‘hen’ I saw the house the hen was sitting on, and from there on it was plain Chambers.
The amount of thematic material crammed in the grid is really impressive; thanks to Skylark for a real challenge, and HG for explaining why two, not one, letters needed to be changed in the grid!
Well I thought this was delightful, especially the clever letter changes (I spent ages looking for FROLIC which is a definition of SKYLARK in Chambers). Made me realise I’d never learned the song beyond “three, four”.
No disrespect to the fine fellows who set for the IQ, but on the basis of the last few puzzles I’d be happy to have Ladies’ Month most months!
I liked this; the number of thematic words in the final grid was very impressive. One quibble is that the first four line endings (SHOE, DOOR, STICKS, STRAIGHT) are not really “symmetrical” but they weren’t that hard to find once some of the other line endings emerged. Another subtlety is that HEN is included in KITCHEN, leading me to wonder if we were meant to count it twice. The positioning of HOUSE directly under HEN in the grid made the final endgame relatively easy for me, at least, to spot. Needed to check Chambers for some of the others, though.
I liked this immensely (maybe because I managed to solve it, ergo must be a good puzzle). The first red-herring for me was thinking that the title must be a reference to Noel so I was constantly background processing potential plays and characters. The second was my search for skylark synonyms like frolic, trick etc. I thought that having HEN dead-centre was very generous and pushed me in the direction of finding the two letter correction required — realizing that H/B was the first.
Found this one very hard, particularly the top right corner which seemed to consist exclusively of words I’d never heard of.
Still, after a few easy weeks I figured it was time for a harder one again. Thank you skylark.
@7
I was also detained by trying to make it about Noel Coward. I thought the Skylark synonym might be Blithe Spirit, a Coward play and what Shelley calls the Skylark (“Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!“).
Ah well. Hens were fun too.
I thoroughly enjoyed this one, Skylark. Once I had sorted out a few parsing problems in conference with HG, everything went swimmingly, except that the version of the rhyme that I learned when young had “maids a KISSING” not in the kitchen. So . . . HEN in the corrections confused me for a while. I didn’t get the coward/chicken connection either, but otherwise found this an excellent puzzle. I’m with Ilan Caron #7, it must be good if you can solve it, especially without Mr Google.
I have failed to solve some crackers, and solved some mediocre ones, so I can’t subscribe to the view that it must be a good puzzle if you can solve it. I am pleased to say though that I solved this and it was good. Like others, the link to the endgame eluded me for a time, but I appreciated all the thematic material when the penny dropped. Thanks very much.
I was very pleased to see my 014? clue quoted. Thank you Skylark! I started the puzzle but am sorry to say that I find clues where misprints can occur anywhere are very difficult and I lacked the stamina to see this one through. That said, the clues seemd to read fairly well and I am sure others with greater ability and/or stamina will have enjoyed the puzzle.
I quite enjoyed the grid fill, which, I agree, was difficult in places but was totally lost by the 12 followers. Eventually, I took it to mean the numbers 13 to 24 and highlighted the clues so numbered. This amounted to 61 cells but only 58 if the coward, 24A, was not included. I assumed this was OK and that the preamble was ambiguous.
A curate’s egg for me I’m afraid, Skylark, but thanks to you and to HG.
I sympathize with your frustration on “corrected misprints”. The subject here is misprint. Corrected is an adjective that describes the misprint, but a misprint it remains.