“Some cells accommodate more than one letter, clashing with crossing entries to form thematic material (only the first and last letters of these should be entered). Other UNDEFINED PARAMETERS provide an instruction. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.”
Cagey is a new name to me. Let’s hope that the key to their puzzle doesn’t elude us!
The 6 clashes give: WOOF, WILMA, WENDA, FRITZ, WIZARD, ODLAW. These are characters in WHERE’S WALLY? (aka WHERE’S WALDO for our transatlantic friends). The UNDEFINED PARAMETERS are the answers to the four clues that lack a definition: HIGHLIGHT CELLS ANSWERING THEME.
The solver is therefore to highlight WALLY, who can be found NW-SE starting near the top-centre of the grid.
I have never spent much time with the thematic puzzle, so all of the non-titular characters were new to me. I thought for at first that the theme might be the book “Woof!”, which is illustrated by Fritz Wegner.
Thankfully, finding WALLY was not difficult as the instruction to write only the first and last letters of the character names made it clear where to start looking.
Thanks Cagey!
| Notation | |
|---|---|
| Definition | word |
| Indicator | [word] |
| Anagram | WORD* |
| Reversal | <WORD |
| Answer/Clue entry | SAPPER/MCNEILE |
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Those stopping dirt spreading from MUD (slander) [by] FLAPS (Wags) (8) | MUDFLAPS |
| 7 | Allowance of “CLOTH” (fabric) [picked up in Petticoat Lane] (5) | CLOFF |
| 10 | Old Scottish service |
ARRIAGE |
| 11 | [Ultimately], |
NAPOO |
| 13 | [Short] IRIS |
IRIS |
| 14 | DOW |
DOWIE |
| 16 | HIGH (Noble) LIGHT (match) (9) | HIGHLIGHT |
| 18 | Leading convergence TO (in direction of) EIN (a German) (5) | TOE-IN |
| 19 | CELL |
CELLS |
| 20 | Half-baked FOOL (pud) DAM (mum) [served as starter] (7) | DAMFOOL |
| 21 | London-born writer’s fixed [part of] DirTY DEn (4) | TYDE |
| 22 | [Initially] P |
PLAY |
| 26 | Dutch physicist‘s LORE (learning) T (time) [in] NZ (New Zealand) (7) | LORENTZ |
| 29 | I (Cagey) [breaking] I DO (marriage vow): [end of] |
IDIOT |
| 31 | Annoyed I RATE (assessor’s boast?) (5) | IRATE |
| 33 | SWEARING* [blind], [trapping] [last of] |
ANSWERING |
| 34 | CZAR’S (Sometime Russian leader is) [keeping] DA (his agreement) to obtain piece of Eastern Europe (7) | CZARDAS |
| 36 | African group [shelled] |
IGBO |
| 37 | TootHachE re-eMergEs [now and again] (5) | THEME |
| 38 | [Find] ETHER (volatile liquid) [after] S |
SEETHER |
| 39 | Refreshments in ODA (ladies’ room) [on board] SS (ship) (5) | SODAS |
| 40 | Private SEC (secretary) < DETER (put off) [retiring] (8) | SECRETED |
| Down | ||
| 1 | MAIN (Major) TOASTS (tributes) [involving] PM (leader) and supporters on boat (12) | MAINTOPMASTS |
| 2 | Control DR (Crippen – possibly) with IV (intravenous) E (Ecstasy) (5) | DRIVE |
| 3 | {HIS IFFY}* [fancy] dress as a mermaid on stage? (7) | FISHIFY |
| 4 | Judeo-Spanish DALI* [misused]? NO (Never)! (6) | LADINO |
| 5 | Person’s nadir – [forgetting almost half of] PELMA |
PELMA |
| 6 | Gordon Ramsay’s chilly [first bite of] S |
SNELLY |
| 7 | [Heard] “CAVILL” (Solo actor) make petty objections (5) | CAVIL |
| 8 | Audibly rushed from WOO (court), SHE (that woman) and D (daughter) (7) | WOOSHED |
| 9 | Hereby presenting real facts FOR (in support of) THERE (present) CORD (line) (12, three words) | FOR THE RECORD |
| 12 | [Lost] GIPSY* guardian during journey to the west? (5) | PIGSY |
| 15 | Aftermath of ROW (disagreement) with EN (nurse) (5) | ROWEN |
| 17 | HELOT | |
| 19 | COLOR |
COLOR |
| 21 | Plate TER |
TERGITE |
| 23 | LAW (Act) [to follow] LYNCH (auteur)’s severe punishment without due process (8) | LYNCH-LAW |
| 24 | ISLE (Man at sea, maybe) [follows] [western part of] A |
AISLE |
| 25 | PIE (Confusion) with < SEC (moment) [returning] broken jigsaw? (6) | PIECES |
| 27 | Washer [some] engineeR INSERted (6) | RINSER |
| 28 | FRI (Friday), [cut] TH |
FRITH |
| 30 | Mac’s dreams of “DRAMS” [Elmer Fudd’s] (shorts)! (5) | DWAMS |
| 32 | [Having W (week) away], |
AUGHT |
| 35 | Learned WISE (way out of the Ark) (4) | WISE |
| M | U | D | F | L | A | P | S | C | L | WF | F | |
| A | R | R | I | A | G | E | N | A | P | O | O | |
| I | R | I | S | D | O | WA | E | V | I | S | R | |
| N | R | V | H | I | G | H | L | I | G | H | T | |
| T | O | E | I | N | C | E | L | L | S | E | H | |
| O | WA | M | F | O | O | L | Y | T | Y | D | E | |
| P | L | A | Y | P | L | O | R | E | N | FZ | R | |
| M | Y | I | D | I | O | T | I | R | A | T | E | |
| A | N | S | W | E | R | I | N | G | U | H | C | |
| S | C | L | A | C | WD | A | S | I | G | B | O | |
| T | H | E | M | E | S | E | E | T | H | E | R | |
| S | OW | A | S | S | E | C | R | E | T | E | D |
I had the same experience as Mister Sting: started by getting WOOF and FRITZ, which suggested the book by Allan Ahlberg. Then the ingenuous 5D Pelma led to WILMA, and that was enough to trigger distant memories of playing the WALLY game. Another false start was 23D: having L and N as crossers convinced me that the auteur must be LANG (another Fritz), a figure more central to the historic development of ‘auteur theory’ than David Lynch, from a different era… but false starts and trial-and-error are part of the pleasure of working through this kind of high-quality puzzle. Many thanks to Cagey and also to Mr S.
Thanks to Cagey for a fun mental workout, and Mister Sting for the blog.
No chance of a prize for me this week, as I failed to spot WA-LLY…instead I highlighted FOOL, ASS, NELLY, GIT and IDIOT, thinking we were after generic ‘wallies’ – and now I feel a bit of a wally too!
A fun challenge indeed, although made a lot easier once I realised that we were kindly given the lengths of answers, not entries – hence it was possible to deduce that there were 6 across and 6 down clues that were too long, and that they intersected in 6 pairs, thus making it likely that the intersecting cells would be the overflowing ones.
It still took a while the get to the theme and unravel the rest, but in the end WALLY was straightforward to find. Although I don’t know if anyone noticed a WALY lurking on the left hand side; I wondered if that was intentional as in the original books there are often characters looking very similar to Wally himself. If so, a nice additional touch.
Thank you both!
Oh and I had never heard of any of the additional characters and even with 3 of them deduced it still took a lot of Googling to get to Wally!
@2. Mc_rapper67. I’d say that. far from being a Wally, you deserve the prize, or at least an extra prize, for ingenuity – and your highlighting does, surely, ‘answer the theme’ in an authentic way.
Thanks for kind words. WALY and (most) of the other words for fools were deliberate. The git was not! Was well aware of woof as a TV series from when I was younger (was set/filmed in and around Nottingham, which was where I grew up). And actually downloaded and read the book when I was writing this as I was reminded of it and read about TV series on net. Stu