Wickball has given us a barred puzzle for the York S&B….
Bert here………
The preamble says:
‘One clue* has slipped to the bottom but has been replaced by some thematic assistance. 27 answers are too long and must be modified for entry, leaving non-words in most cases: their wordplay is for the entry. The perimeter must be deduced’
Fortunately Wickball has given us the letter counts for the unaltered answers, enabling us to spot the unaltered ones and giving us some ‘straight’ clues to tackle, before attempting to find out how the others should be altered. Once I had solved some of the unaltered clues, providing some crossing letters, it became clear fairly quickly that the letter Y had to be missed out whenever it appears in an answer – and there are a lot of missing Ys! Well done Wickball for managing to find so many!
I managed to solve all the clues except 14d, but there is only one word that fits C-ED-B-E, and I realised that this is the ‘clue that slipped to the bottom’ – see the parsings below.
According to the preamble, the ‘replacement’ clue at 14d offers ‘some thematic assistance’. Having filled the grid, it is clearly meant to help in completing the perimeter, with ‘not wise to mention’ a homophone confirming that Ys are to be omitted. So… the clue suggests that the perimeter should be filled in ‘either way’ with something that is ‘as easy as…..’. As the first and last letters of the two 13-letter entries at 1d and 20ac are the same (G and S) I reached the conclusion that the same letters should be entered clockwise and anticlockwise, probably starting at the top left corner, passing through G and S and ending at the bottom right hand corner – not a lot to go on.
However, I had to resort to some help from Wickball to realise that it’s not ‘easy as ‘falling off a log’ or ‘easy as pie’ – it is ‘as easy as ABC’…D, E, F… to Z, missing out Y of course.
An anagram (‘exotic’) of TEAS
First letters or ‘starts’ of The Old Disputes Again
Hidden (‘lost’) in iceD RAvine
A clue-as-definition: an anagram (‘produces’) of NO DAM
A homophone (‘sounding’) of TRUE (faithful) + P (pee, urinate – ‘relief’) – we needed a bit of help with the last bit – a stretch too far?
FeLSPAR missing the ‘e’ (first letter or ‘start’ to erode) and with the last two letters reversed (‘finally turning’)
Double definition – one for the answer and one for the entry
Double definition
Hidden (‘fragment of’) in iconiC MAjesty – new word for us – we’ve heard of ogee mouldings, of which CYMA is a type
SHOVEl (gardener’s tool) missing the last letter or ‘briefly’ – we tend to think of building labourers using shovels and gardeners using spades, but perhaps that’s a bit pedantic
An anagram (‘remix’) of OUR CHOSEN SONG
DRuGS (Es perhaps) with the ‘u’ ‘upgraded’ to A – as in exam grades, or possibly film certificates
L (left) after or ‘to the right’ of A (absolute) M (master)
With a Cockney accent (‘picked up in Bow’) ‘arrow’ (dart) would tend to be pronounced ‘ARRA’
POS seems to be an abbreviation of Point Of Sale, but it’s not in Chambers
B (British) T (tenor) HE WAs missing the last letter or ‘almost’
ETH (‘old character’ – an Old English letter) OS (outsize – ‘large’)
I (one) taken in by ICER (decorator, as in cake decorating)
lEASh missing the first and last letters or ‘unconstrained’
DE LA (French for ‘of the’)
S (Stokes) + a reversal (‘back’) of GOT
An anagram (‘nasty’) of FLASH OF GOITRE
Hidden (‘a bit of’) in thE OTher
SN (symbol for tin) ON M (first letter or ‘head’ of my) S (last letter or ‘ending’ in tears) – we’re not at all sure about the definition here – the answer is in the plural, but the definition refers to ‘one’
A reversal (‘turns up’) of alternate (‘occasional’) letters of hOgArTh
TAN (beat) round or ‘enthralling’ MP (member)
A clue-as-definition: A (American) MS (Mississippi – ‘state’) – Americans in the southern states call sweet potatoes yams
EP (extended play – ‘old record’) in DLO (dead-letter office – an unlikely abbreviation that is in Chambers!)
An anagram (‘drunk’) of RUM AT SEA
rULEr (potentate) missing the first and last letters or ‘uncovered’ – again we’re not sure about the definition – ‘Yule’ is the season of Christmas, a yule log is either a cake or a piece of wood to be burnt at Christmas, but the association is pretty obvious – again maybe we’re being too pedantic?
O (nothing) after or ‘under’ (in a down clue) BRA (support) V (very)
*This is the replacement clue for the clue that has ‘slipped to the bottom’: The clue for this answer is: ‘Plausible bum bred lice‘: an anagram (‘bum’) of BRED LICE
HO (house) in WA (Western Australia – Perth is the state capital)
GR (gross) after A N (first letter or ‘beginning’ of new)
ERATO (muse) with the first and last letters or ‘sides’ switching
MPH (speed) ‘caught’ in NET (trap)
ACTS (turns, as is stage performances) round or ‘over’ H (hot)
A reversal (‘climbing’) of ACE (great) RA (artist)
An anagram (‘manoeuvre’) of WAR
A reversal (‘on reflection’) of DEE (river)
A (rather dubious) double definition
S (first letter of spaceman) O (zero) G (force of gravity)
I got all of this, except the endgame perimeter solution eluded me. Based on the false clue for 14D, I also thought of “falling off a log,” (which does fit, although not completely around), as well as “ABC,” but it never occurred to me to write out the rest of the alphabet, too (which is not conventionally a part of the idiom). From the instructions, I am not sure how I would have recognized that I had arrived at the correct solution? Oh, well, thanks for the explanation. I thought that the clue for SYNONYMS made sense when I was solving, but now I do not remember what my reading of the definition was.
Loved this, and like Cineraria and the blogger I got as far as “falling off a log” and variations, then came here to find out.
3d I parsed as: One (of these things) could be: “Like a cake”.
Which works for me with the answer as a plural.
Thanks to Bert for the blog and to the two “thinkers”. Cineraria @ 1, I think you also commented favourably on my 2022 puzzle, so thanks again. Ffredi @2, so pleased you enjoyed it and, yes, that was my parsing of 3d.
Sorry neither of you got the perimeter – I thought the repeated G & S would be enough but perhaps the key phrase is too dated (like me!)