Listener No 4851, “loglog” by Botox

Botox is a collaboration between two long-standing Listener setters, Artix (who is pretty tough) and Shark (who is also pretty tough). Last year’s Listener dinner was held in Lincoln, and I bumped into both these setters on the last leg of the journey from Retford. Of course they didn’t provide me with any insight into this puzzle which was probably already with the Editors.

Botox’s last Listener was no. 4490, REJOB (all capitals, unlike this week’s which wasn’t). My blog for that one over at Listen With Others started “Spoiler Alert: this was bloody tough!” The preamble this week included the phrase “Rows 5–6 are gibberish”. We also had six clues which were double clues overlapping by two cells and with clashes in their circled cells. Well, that’s a new one! All others had an extra word.

1ac Editor possibly lying about a short advert? Fat chance! (13) looked as though it would be some sort of anagram but with an extra word needing removal, nothing jumped out; it was to be IMPROBABILITY [IMPROBITY around (A + BIL(l))]. 10ac Island nation involved in European Union drama (4) was good old NIUE [(IN + EU)*] and 11ac was an anagram of antelopes, although will go ape for was an unusual anagram indicator.

There were several clues to note. 14 Yachtie to push the boat out, one eclipsing Ainslie’s third for the silver in Paris (7, two words) for LARGE IT (never heard of that one before) [L’ARGENT with I for (Ai)N(slie)] — easy really. I also liked 24ac Heading to port, utter: Etna’s finally about to blow (5) [PURE< + (abou)T], but favourite was 12dn Horrified by range, special projectile used by David Livingstone chasing seven, missing six (5;10) for AGASP [AGA + SP] / SLINGSTONE [LIVINGSTONE after S – VI].

I finally fathomed the overlapping and clashing entries with 14dn where we had LACQUER/CYCLONE with QUER/Y sharing the circled cell. SCREAMER and PLING both gave an exclamation mark and BLINTZE/TESTATE gave us a Z, the one letter that had to finish the surname linked to the dedicatee who was MELENDEZ. Obviously he needed googling but either he didn’t immediately give me the thematic individual, or I just missed it first time through!

Oh yes! The 11dn and 6 circled cells finally revealed CHICKEN SCRATCH, that well-known… what?! More googling and more perplexity ensued before that character from the Peanuts comic strip popped up — Woodstock whose words were denoted by ‘ ” ! ? Z. The shaded cells gave us MORSE, that famous detective in books and on TV (neither of which I have bothered with), but his first book Last Bus to Woodstock seemed somewhat relevant.

The first and last letters from the extra words in clues gave Read grey cells. Symbolise these one way, whites another. Substituting Morse code for all the letters in rows 5 and 6 gave just too much gibberish, even for Botox. The continuation of the thematic title was almost certainly WOODSTOCK, but that would just be a guess and needed confirming by the instruction we were given.

Time to relax. I think I went and played golf. That was followed by more grid-staring which finally (after far too long) had me focus on that solitary R at the end of row 5 which could become the Morse code dash for T at the end of LAST in the title. So we had to substitute dashes for the letters of MORSE and dots for the other letters to give us the Morse code for LAST BUS with TO WOODSTOCK going under the grid — I’m hoping as plain text. Blimey, Guv!

I’m not sure why the title was lower-case loglog, log being meaning both wood and stock. Probably just trying to get us side-tracked into the world of mathematics.

Phenomenal puzzle with so many original ideas. Thanks, Botox. Not too sure I’m looking forward to your next!