I’ve found puzzles by Eclogue quite variable in the past. Some excellent, some only so-so; some difficult, some not so hard. (And no correlation between the two.)
Preamble: Wordplay in 18 clues omits a single letter which is to be entered in the cell at the foot of the column in which it appears. Taken in clue order, single extra letters in the wordplay of the remaining 21 clues provide five consecutive words from a poem (in ODQ) whose author is provided by the circled cells. Solvers must highlight the two rows (other than the silvered one) that provide cryptic representations of three further lines of the poem.
I tackled the long anagrams early on; the two where the wordplay had an extra letter (21a, 34a) were that much easier than the one where the wordplay omitted a letter (11a). Unlike those three, it was far from obvious with many other clues as to which type they were. This meant that I often tried those clues twice, first to see if they lost a letter, and then to see if they gained one. But having concluded which type they were, the clues were by and large quite accessible.
I had a smattering of letters in the bottom row, and also about half the extra letters, but nothing leapt out, except that they both ended in IGHT. So, some sort of rhyme, which, together with the “poem” in the preamble, suggested that the bottom row also ends a line in that poem. A while later I had extended that fragment to ..S FAR FAST.R THAN .IGHT and a familiar limerick came to mind …
The limerick by Arthur Buller entitled ‘Relativity’, published in Punch (19 December 1923), is:
There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night.
It was now time to tackle the endgame. The penultimate row, BRIGHT REPLIED is “on the” PREVIOUS NIGHT, so that cryptically indicates the final line of the limerick. Two more lines to find, and it really has to be the third and fourth. The top row begins REL and ends ROAD so that indicates “in a relative way”. At this point I stumbled because I’d lazily used Wikipedia, which has line 3 as “She started one day”. I went out for a short pre-lunch walk with the lines as I remembered them running through my head, and something wasn’t quite right. When I got home I checked my ODQ, and my memory had served me well: the line is “She set out one day”, and so we see ONE DAY “set out” in the middle of the top row, which now cryptically represents the required two lines.
Thanks Eclogue – I’d rate this somewhere between excellent & so-so, and also between difficult & not so hard.
| No. | Clue | Answer | ¬ | X | Wordplay |
| Across | |||||
| 1 | Supplied trained lawyer to editor (7) | RELAYED | W | [LAWYER]* ED(itor) | |
| 8 | Jock’s afraid to go round short oaf in American railway (4) | ROAD | A | RAD (afraid, Scot) around OA(f) | |
| 11 | I air melanoma worries in setting for Bologna (13) | EMILIA-ROMAGNA | G | [I AIR MELANOMA]* | |
| 12 | Dish nut after a bit of a kip (5) | PATEN | P | EN (nut) after AT (100 at = 1 kip, Laos) | |
| 14 | Women exiting leg-shows panning distinguishing mark (6) | SEGHOL | S | [LEG-SHOWS ¬ W(omen)]* | |
| 15 | Scots old identical safe holding money note (5) | SAMEN | F | SAFE around M(oney) N(ote) | |
| 17 | French town’s lab involved in artificial intelligence (4) | ALBI | A | LAB in AI (artificial intelligence) | |
| 20 | Constriction held in with muscles (7) | ISTHMUS | S | (w)ITH MUS(cles) | |
| 21 | Nurturer coming around defending with a wall (13) | COUNTERMURING | R | [NURTURER COMING]* | |
| 24 | Fiat, say, in the place of the seal marks the cause of old Spanish pretender (7) | CARLISM | I | CAR (Fiat, say) LS (in the place of the seal) M(arks) | |
| 26 | Aft crosses current initially with special turns (4) | ACTS | F | AFT around C(urrent) S(pecial) | |
| 29 | Welsh maiden with untidy hair (5) | RHIAN | N | [HAIR]* | |
| 32 | One who does not know grain structure (6) | IGNARO | O | [GRAIN]* | |
| 33 | One of the Medicis, for example, turning oar after confusion (5) | PIERO | A | OAR< after PIE (confusion) | |
| 34 | Morality ideals formulated as one who may intervene (13) | MEDIATORIALLY | S | [MORALITY IDEALS]* | |
| 35 | Large prison in New York (4) | BRIG | R | BIG (large) | |
| 36 | Having come back pet riled vagrant (7) | REPLIED | T | [PET RILED]* | |
| Down | |||||
| 1 | Partitions about American city (5) | REPLA | P | RE (about) LA (Los Angeles, American city) | |
| 2 | Liberal appeal being below strength (4) | LITE | E | L(iberal) IT (appeal) | |
| 3 | Alien casting for young fish (6) | ALEVIN | V | [ALIEN]* | |
| 4 | Arab diet, perhaps, holding tea amid timeless floor in the Louvre (6) | EATAGE | E | TEA in ÉTAGE (floor, Fr) ¬ T(ime) | |
| 5 | House doctor’s married (4) | DRUM | U | DR (doctor) M(married) | |
| 6 | Sniffs drug after issue rises (5) | NOSES | S | E (Ecstasy, drug) after SON< (issue) | |
| 7 | Sign Trump is out of power fold (7) | OMENTUM | R | OMEN (sign) TRUMP ¬ P(ower) | |
| 8 | Indian millet’s initially ripening all grain (4) | RAGI | I | R(ipening) A(ll) G(rain) | |
| 9 | Ohio has a bug about ancient alphabet (7) | OGHAMIC | G | O(hio) HA’ (has) MIC (microphone, bug) | |
| 10 | Glasgow’s foster-children, mischievous lads (5) | DALTS | T | [LADS]* | |
| 13 | Lot adult held in towards the stern at sea (6) | AFLOAT | T | LOT A(dult) in AFT (towards the stern) | |
| 16 | Watch local one’s territory (6) | HUNTER | H | UN (one, dialect) TER(ritory) | |
| 18 | Hid letter with difficulty back in East African nation (7) | BURUNDI | H | HID NU (letter) RUB (difficulty) all< | |
| 19 | Strong cheer for Scottish gentleman? (7) | STIRRAH | I | STR(ong) RAH (cheer) | |
| 22 | Inadequate game are shot (6) | MEAGRE | A | [GAME ARE]* | |
| 23 | Tyre ran boy round about Italy (6) | RADIAL | N | RAN LAD< (boy) aroung I(taly) | |
| 24 | Surgeon describing mil over cask’s rim (5) | CHIMB | L | CHB (surgeon) around MIL< | |
| 25 | Seasonal body of water’s quiet and dry (5) | SHOTT | O | SH (quiet) TT (dry) | |
| 27 | Is daughter following Irish tool for foreign teaching method? (5) | SLOYD | I | IS D(aughter) after LOY (Irish tool) | |
| 28 | For example, Douglas crone takes in gin endlessly (4) | HAIG | G | HAG (crone) around GI(n) | |
| 30 | Nearly hit, the bard’s maybe to warn fellow (4) | IVOR | H | HI(t) VOR (warn, perhaps, Shakesp) | |
| 31 | Tiled over charcuterie (4) | DELI | T | TILED< | |
An enjoyable, fairly gentle solve here. I found the poem in question, but will admit to sort-of-guessing (successfully) the lines to highlight as I wasn’t quite sure how they cryptically referred to lines in the poem.
Enjoyed, but nothing to add! My solving experience was pretty much the same — remembered the limerick (BRIGHT in the grid provided a useful jog) but not the name of its author, eventually seen in the marked cells. Duly confirmed by ODQ — I’m always grateful when IQ uses a quote included in my elderly copy.
Many thanks to Eclogue and HolyGhost .
Took me a while to spot ONE DAY (anag) in REL ROAD … but I got there in the end. Couldn’t parse 12A (not knowing that an AT divides a KIP), or 24A (LS = in the place of the seal; also unknown to me). Other than that, all present and correct this week. A fun puzzle, with a clever finish. Many thanks, as always, to both blogger and setter.
Very silly and very enjoyable
A: I’ve never been able to find the Inquisitor crosswords online
B: This would have been much to hard for me
C: Might this be the reply, also by Buller, alluded to:
To her friends said the Bright one in chatter,
“I have learned something new about matter:
My speed was so great,
Much increased was my weight,
Yet I failed to become any fatter!”
‘Too hard’.
I enjoyed grappling with the two types of clue, and I completed the grid before I had any idea of what the theme was about. I had ticked off all 18 of one type of clue but was left with three queries among the other clues that stopped the key word LIGHT from fully revealing itself.
When LIGHT came to light the text of the full message made more sense (or at least better nonsense), but I had to look it up to get the full limerick, which I finally recognised when I read it.
I was impressed with the symmetry of the grid (above the bottom row) and the fact that every letter in the bottom row came consistently from either one or two clues, depending (respectively) on whether it was an unchecked letter or not.
Thanks to Eclogue for an enjoyable, well-designed puzzle and to HolyGhost for the blog.