Passed On by Jaques
One word in each across clue must be cut short before solving. In clue order the removed letters give two lines of a verse, missing some words, followed by the author’s surname. Suitably guided by these lines solvers must alter one entry, then change nine other cells to show how the message was passed on. All entries in the final grid are real words, the singular form at 29 justifiable online.
My week since solving this puzzle has been a bit disrupted. Hospital appointments and a ferry trip and long-ish drives and a, thoroughly enjoyable, trip to The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo having gotten in the way.
So, here’s the puzzle as I remember it.
Before I’d even read the preamble or any other clues, 9d jumped out and shouted ALIEN. Other than that, the NW quadrant was completed relatively easily and I soon got the hang of looking for last letters of words. Many of them stood out quite readily though some of them proved a bit more tricky. Knowing that last letters were dropping made finding them a bit less of a challenge than the more normal, “there’s a misprint somewhere.” I can’t make my mind up if it’s a good or bad thing.
As the extra letters began to appear, I noticed that they finished with HOOD, which made me think that we were looking for an author called Hood. Or could it possibly be our old mate Robin Hood. Since I had not much else to go on, I left things until I could make more sense of it.
Eventually, I had what looked like the makings of BEFELL so I searched for “Befell Hood Quote” and came up with https://libquotes.com/thomas-hood/quote/lbk9o9x, which comes from Faithless Sally Brown by Thomas Hood.
The final quote (including the “missing” words referred to in the preamble) is: HIS (death which happened in his berth), AT FORTY-ODD BEFELL. And it carries on with: They went and told the sexton, and The sexton toll’d the bell.
I haven’t read the whole piece but clearly the use of berth is deliberately confused with birth and we have to change BERTH in 41a to Death
Anyway, on to the end game. Clearly we have to change BERTH in 41a to DEATH and reading down the central column, we see TOLD THE SEXTON, which we have to change to TOLL’D THE BELL.
Very enjoyable puzzle. Many thanks to Jacques.
| Clue | Entry | Extra letter | Wordplay |
| Across | |||
| 1 Within Parish the desire is to adopt little bay (7) | COVELET | H |
COVET (desire) around LE (the in French) |
| 7 Hindi for emu coming in with luck for northern bird (5) | WHAUP | I |
With+[em]U (hind)+HAP (luck) |
| 11 Assess returning ordinary rather than singular herb (7) | OREGANO | S |
ONAGER (asses)+Ordinary rev: returning I can’t see any indication that “onager” is the plural form |
| 12 Everything planted in arable land faithfully used in pasta (6) | LEALLY | A |
LEY (arable land) around ALL (everything) |
| 13 Familiar cat, flash and gaudy’s covert round middle of night (5) | MOGGY | T |
MO (flash)+[ni]G[ht]+G[aud]Y (covers) |
| 14 Tense if fallen supply to remain constant in the market (8) | FLATLINE | F |
Tense+I+FALLEN anag: supply |
| 15 Dry valley’s depth with room to advance to Hugo (4) | WADY | O |
WAY (room to advance hugging Depth |
| 16 Explorer finally admitted to remote anxiety (4) | FEAR | R |
FAR (remote) around [explor]E (finally) |
| 17 Takes back streetcar stupidly to shunt carriage at rear (8) | RETRACTS | T |
STRE][e]TCAR (minus [carriag]E) anag: stupidly |
| 20 Unearthly one and earthy rogue transfixing rustic one (7) | HAUNTER | Y |
EARTH (anag: rogue) around UN (one; rustically) |
| 22 Dido finally curtailed sign of life, it’s a bit wet (4) | DANK | O |
[di]D (finally)+ANK[h] (sign of life; curtailed) |
| 23 Traditionally local jurisdictions based in rented properties (5) | LEETS | D |
LETS (rented properties) around E (base) |
| 25 Those, north of the border, hated irrationally (4) | THAE | D |
HATE anag: irrationally |
| 27 Ingeniously overcomes work barb quietly absorbing taunt (7) | OUTWITS | B |
O[p]US minus P (quietly) around TWIT (taunt) |
| 33 Heroine to destroy challenges being held most serious (8) | HEAVIEST | E |
Heroin+EAT (destroy) around VIES (challenges) |
| 34 Cosmetic height certainly rejected by elf (4) | KOHL | F |
Height+OK (certainly) rev: rejected+L (el; letter of the alphabet) |
| 36 Aged around forty and pine for wheels (4) | AXLE | E |
AE (aged; Latin) around XL (forty; Roman numerals) |
| 37 Marine, maybe, rushes eliminating papal leakage preventions (8) | SEALANTS | L |
SEA (marine)+[p]LANTS (rushes, maybe; minus Papa) |
| 38 All, perhaps, from Chicago endlessly fattened up chicken (5) | CAPON | L |
CAPON[e] (Al Capone, infamous Chicago resident; endlessly) |
| 39 Ash ever spread round Italian town beneath the mountains (6) | VARESE | H |
AS EVER anag: spread round Varese – Italian town |
| 40 Repelled goo coating to prepare printer roller, might it emanate from pen? (7) | OINKING | O |
GO (rev: repelled) around INK IN (prepare print roller) |
| 41 Borneo, on its perimeter, right hard place to manoeuvre ships (5) | BERTH | O |
B[orn]E (perimeter)+RighT+Height |
| 42 Denies endlessly retreat has defiled inside (7) | NEGATES | D |
NES[t] (retreat; endlessly) around GATE (defile) |
| Down | |||
| 1 Chinese agent’s spin on rough road pursuing Communist (9) | COMPRADOR | COMmunist+PR (spin)+ROAD (anag: rough) | |
| 2 Rodsman occasionally takes in line for float (7) | OROPESA | [r]O[d]S[m]A[n] (ocassionally) around ROPE (line) | |
| 3 Sitting idle one’s after answer in check (8) | VEGETANT | (one of these that happen from time-to-time) I’m sure I justified it at solving time but now, a week later, I can’t see anything except VET=check |
|
| 4 Grey cuckoo after, say, old nesting site (6) | EGGERY | EG (say)+GREY (anag: cuckoo) | |
| 5 Kent bared exposed cliff opposite to the French (6, 2 words) | EN FACE | [k]EN[t] (bared)+FACE (exposed cliff) | |
| 6 Half-heartedly practises songs unlikely to get improvement lying around (7, 2 words) | PLAYS AT | PAT (unable to be improved – poker) around LAYS (songs) | |
| 7 Wingless New Zealander turned up bit weak (4) | WETA | ATE (bit)+Weak rev: turned up | |
| 8 50% of Spenser chauvinist female’s claiming (6) | HALFEN | ALF (chauvinist) inside HEN (female) | |
| 9 What Area 51 nut makes up? (5) | ALIEN | &lit. Area+LI (51)+EN (nut) |
|
| 10 Awful narrow at centre of bone (5) | ULNAR | awfUL NARrow (hidden: at centre of) | |
| 15 Runner’s difficulty beginning to include energy sap (6) | WALLIE | WALL (runner’s difficulty)+I[nclude] E[nergy] (beginnings) | |
| 18 Like old Roman flooring’s imperfect vestigium, touch lost from the middle (6) | MUSIVE | VES[tig]IUM (missing tig (touch)) anag: imperfect | |
| 19 Maybe his degree once rings a bell (9) | GREETINGS | GREE (degree once)+TINGS (rings a bell) Def: plural of HI (greeting) |
|
| 21 Rebus’s accusation placing gumshoe in prospect of danger (8) | THREAPIT | PI (gumshoe; private Investigator) inside THREAT (prospect of danger) | |
| 24 Chemical vapours turn the sane mad (7) | ETHANES | THE SANE (anag: turn … mad) | |
| 26 “Plus One” for poet’s equally without delay (7) | ALSOONE | ALSO (plus)+ONE | |
| 28 Sink hole needing topping, it’ll take money (6) | WALLET | [s]WALLET (sinkhole; topped) | |
| 29 As life’s gone wrong, it’s not all it seems (6) | FALSIE | AS LIFES) (anag: gone wrong) |
|
| 30 Madagascan native’s riddle wasting time to get alias (6) | SIFAKA | SIF[t] (minus Time)+AKA (alias: Also Known As) | |
| 31 Youth stages demos regularly rising up in South Africa and Spain (5) | ZOEAE | [d]E[m]O[s] (regullarly; rev: rising up) inside ZA (South Africa: Zuid Afrika) followed by E (Spain: España) | |
| 32 Salmon arrival coming after empty catch (5) | CHARR | C[atc]H (empty)+ARRival | |
| 35 Throw or bung? (4) | DASH | This was the last one I justified but even then I’m still a little confused. (double def of sorts) Dash means throw or bribe. Bung means throw or bribe |
41a BERTH was indeed at forty-odd
11ac OREGANO is the plural ONAGERS, with ‘ordinary’ O rather than ‘singular’ S.
3dn VEGETANT is ‘one (AN) after answer (GET) in check (VET). Chambers has ‘answer (a door or telephone)’ under ‘get’.
Nice to see Thomas Hood getting an outing; with his inexhaustible ingenuity for puns and general wordplay he is the crossword solver’s poet. As to the puzzle, while I never worked out DASH (so many possible words, none of which fell obvious), the rest of the answers went in quickly. But failure at the end, since I was trying to link “They went and” to “told the sexton”, and predictably got nowhere. Many thanks to kenmac for providing the final enlightenment, to HolyGhost@1 for noticing the extra refinement, and to Jacques for the puzzle.
Ill-advisedly, and certainly not advised by the setter, I inked in ‘told the sexton’ in my excitement at spotting it, and then went looking for the next job… until the penny dropped. All’s well that ends well, even if a mess; it was nice to meet the poem, and with no great search-engine work required. Very elegant; thanks to Jaques and kenmac (I also didn’t find ‘dash’)
I felt this was “OK, but not amazing”. There wasn’t really anything the matter with it, but I wasn’t particularly enthused by either the theme or the endgame – though thankfully the latter was at least pretty straightforward to spot, and well constructed.
Couple of minor niggles:
– The poem uses “toll’d” but I guess we were all happy enough to insert “tolled” instead
– Given the preamble I expected at least a few of the words to require the removal of more than one letter; not strictly needed but would have mixed it up a bit
Nonetheless a nice execution so thank you to setter and blogger!
@5 Arnold – your point is quite a salient one – I was defeated by the very last bit of the endgame because I could not make ‘toll’d the bell’ work. In the words of Spinal Tap’s manager I would say that was ‘considerably more than minor’ as a niggle….!
In my Chambers App I have 2 definitions for “dash”, one being “throw” (etc) and one being “a bribe”. So it works on paper even if it’s not imho a very elegant clue
Spot on Bingy @6. This was for me a slightly deflating final step after, in my opinion, a very enjoyable puzzle. Had the instructions told us that the quote should be rendered in modern spelling then “tolled” would have worked. Or maybe that would have been too easy.
I generally enjoyed that, though share the experience of the toll’d / tolled endgame being slightly unsatisfactory… like Sammy @8 I think the different spelling could have been alluded to in the preamble, even quite obliquely, and it would have satisfied this pedant.
Speaking of pedantry… the Chambers entry for THREAPIT has it as a past participle – so, “accused” would have worked for the surface, but “accusation” is the wrong part of speech for this particular word. Unless I’m missing a way of reading the surface (always a possibility!).
Cheers both.
It’s a while since I came across the name Jaques, and it was a pleasure to get stuck into one of his puzzles again. It was at quite a challenging level, and after filling the left half of the grid I slowed down while completing the rest, my last clue to solve being the very last clue. It was nice, incidentally, to see ‘his’ meaning ‘greetings’ again so soon after its recent airing in an Inquisitor.
I recognised the quote early on, as I used to know the whole poem. The way that the last two lines of the verse were made to overlap down the central column was impressive – a very neat piece of design, although, as reported already, I thought there should have been some hint or indication about “toll’d”.
Thanks to Jaques and kenmac.
OK with me. All thanks to Jaques and kenmac. I remembered the relentlessly punning Hood verse but had got it mixed up with “Faithless Nelly Gray”, which did not help. Nice to have the strong hints “aged around forty” (36A), “Marine, maybe” (37A) and “rings a bell” (19D).
I have the same problem as Rob T @9 with THREAPIT (part of speech), and likewise a minor quibble over TOLL’D/TOLLED.
No issue with DASH though (apart from it taking me ages to dig out): in Chambers, DASH^1 starts “to throw” & DASH^2 ends “bribe”).
But I thought the puzzle wasn’t all that bad. Thanks go to Ken & Jaques.