An easy solve to start the year was surely due but, oh dear, it was not to be! Botox, we know, is a combination of Ascot Gold Cup winner, Shark, and Artix who is renowned for the complexity of his compilations, and what a pre-ramble! We will have to find a dedicatee and another character. Six clues (happily indicated because of the double word-lengths) are ‘really two clues, for answers whose entries overlap by two cells, with clashing letters in their circled cell describing what to enter there’ … Then we are told that two rows are gibberish AND that all other clues need a word removed to enable solving. We will be told by the last and first letters of those words how we must replace the uncircled letters in rows 5 and 6 with marks representing the start of a thematic title and we will have to complete that title below the grid. The asterisked cells and one other will give us the surname of a character linked to the dedicatee.
Of course we spotted the alcohol. (The two Dash bloggers share a table with Botox at the Listener Setters’ dinners so we had little doubt about their retaining their access to the Oenophile setters!) ‘Port’ and ‘red’ appeared in the clues but then there was ‘Is there space here for chapel service? Take whiskey, say, beforehand (6)’. (Close contact with the ecclesiastical member of Dash was clearly having its effect…) But Botox really needed a W*Y word that would give YW for the message that those letters were producing – and after several hours of solving it appeared at last: READ GREY CELLS, SYMBOLISE THESE ONE WAY, WHITES ANOTHER; so what better than whiskey? Cheers, Botox!
It helped when IMPROBABILITY appeared at 1 across. At that stage that was how one of the bloggers felt about ever understanding what was going on. There were brilliant clues (of course) like that superb Livingstone one, ‘Horrified by range, special projectile used by David Livingstone chasing seven, missing six (5;10)’ which gave us AGA + SP and (the boy David’s) SLINGSTONE, when we removed that VI from (David) Livingstone. How lovely too to see a Spooner clue that wasn’t impossible to solve: ‘Spooner’s [ideal] kinds of weather for trunks (9, two words), where RAIN MODES led to MAIN ROADS. ‘Audible quacks observed [on] waterfront (8)’ earned a broad smile too as a homophone clue: DOCS EYED gave us DOCKSIDE. Truly, there wasn’t a clue to grumble about, but oh my! They were tough.
MORSE appeared in the grey cells and Melendez appeared in those asterisked letters. We seemed to have QUERY, CHICKEN SCRATCH, PLING and SCREAMER emerging from those clashing letters in the circles (“two cells” are mentioned in the preamble because an adjacent cell is also part of the clash/overlap), but then what to do? Well, a lot of head scratching! One of us counted the years back from Morse and saw Simenon fitted more or less (when SYMBOLISE THE SEINE looked possible in the message), and Bugs Bunny provided another brief diversion. But then, what a stunning endgame, and one that when we worked it out had that “yes, of course” feel that meant we were home and dry. ‘Last Bus to Woodstock’ was apparently the first book in Colin Dexter’s Morse series (the dates work out) and if we put LAST BUS in morse (dashes in the grey cells, dots in the white ones in those two gibberish rows) we were left with TO WOODSTOCK below the grid: in the form of a dedication too. I am told that Woodstock (the Peanuts character) communicates in chicken scratches when he hasn’t resorted to ZZZZZ! and that Melendez was his ‘voice’.
And ‘Loglog’? Doh! Log = Wood and log = stock.
A dazzling compilation. Thank you Botox.
(This blog is provided by DASH (Chalicea and Vagans) as a joint continuation of those by the Vagans and the Numpties.)
We were glad to see that “For the chicken scratch cells, any squiggles that didn’t look like a meaningful symbol or image were accepted..” The published solution shows a single scratch but “chicken scratch” in the sense used here is “In plural or as a mass noun: unintelligible, illegible, or roughly-drawn marks, lines, symbols, or letters, typically made by hand; illegible handwriting. In singular: an instance of this.” (OED) and so describing a series of scrathcy marks.
Botox is one (two?) of my favourite setters (that Magpie numerical! that SUBTOPIA clue worthy a place in Chambers — “Up-and-coming area, one with grass and public transport? (8)” ), so this was a very welcome sight on Friday afternoon!
Some lovely clues here and a beautiful endgame, and I hope I was not marked wrong for chicken scratches that could be interpreted as “” (if one tries hard).
Nice workout and a clever endgame revealing 2 favourites in Morse and Peanuts. Cheers Dash and Botox.