Listener No 4849, “Peace at Last” by Priest

Here we are with the first puzzle of 2025. It’s also the first time in over 33 years that entries will go winging their way to an address not in St Albans. It’s not (I think) because one JEG has moved but because we have a new marker and statistician. I’ve a sneaky feeling that I know who that is but only time will tell. It’s a shame that the opportunity wasn’t taken to allow entries via email; perhaps they’re ironing out fine details and it’s just over the horizon? (I’ve got no inside knowledge of that!) Many thanks as ever to John and the very best of luck to the new man.

On to this week’s puzzle by Priest. I did wonder whether this was a different pseudonym for one of our setters with a religious background. It turns out it is a different pseudonym but not who I thought — JFD not Vagans!

Clues in pairs greeted us, one of them containing a misprint, the corrections giving an instruction for solving the other. Across and down weren’t indicated in the clue numbering; it was up to us to determine that the first clue 6/13 with (8;7|19) needed us to work out that it referred to 6dn/13ac, the 19 to be used in sorting something at the end.

6dn/13ac was Spur in Death Valley kills shade, shield part of red boulder that’s not led out water and I spotted the possibility that red boulder – led could give something, and BORDURE (shield part) it was [(RED BOULDER)* – LED*); Spur was the misprint for Spar in the first part of the clue. It looked as though water was superfluous so perhaps words had to be dropped from clues to enable solving. (Only after finishing the puzzle did I discover from the Listener web site that deserted was missing from the end of the clue.)

I’m not sure which clue led me to see that only parts of some words needed to be cut from clues to enable solving. It might have been Watch in 20dn becoming Wat, for Wat TYLER. Solving was fairly slow even after that had been discovered, with some strange words coming out in the mix: YUMPS, HYPOCOTYL, BOUSY and ULTRA-DISTANCE the main candidates.

I think my favourite clue was for the last of those strange words, basically because it took me forever to disambiguate: 37,5 Place of origin, ie Smyrna, [se]cured very [fat] far, rough currant trader’s luncheon invite, initially lacking basic skills (8;13|13), SEMINARY [IE SMYRNA)*] and ULTRA-DISTANCE [(CURRANT TRADER’S + L(uncheon) I(nvite))* – RR & R].

Now I’m not one to indulge in hyperbole [What about ‘forever’ above? Ed.], but it seemed to me that T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land had been in dozens of puzzles over the years. In fact, I could only find five, of which three in the Listener. (Should I mention that one of those was just last year?)

The misprint clues gave us something we had probably worked out for ourselves: Ax word or string in clue. So the excised bits in the non-misprint clues gave The Burial of the Dead, A Game of Ch|ess, The Fire Se|rm|on, Dea|th by Water. These are the first four sections of the poem, Chess, Sermon and Death each being split over more than one clue. That left What the Thunder Said to go under the grid and PHLEBAS in row 10 and TIRESIAS in column 8 to be highlighted, assuming they are the contrasting characters (I couldn’t see any others).

I’m still confused by the bits chopped from sequence 19/20 which seems to give water and er! Any help?

A pretty tricky start of the year from Priest. I hope I got it sorted.