[New comment layout] - details here
We meet Paddock in a range of crosswords, Paddock in the Listener, Phylax in the Magpie, Ranunculus in the EV, Triton, and Phibs as the EV blogger (I hope I’ve got those right) so we know we are in the hands of an expert.
We are to extract an extra letter from six clues and these will be arranged into the name of a prototype. Then we will find its familiar derivative in the grid and be given a context for the ‘non-perimeter cells’ (Well there are a hundred of those – intriguing!) There are two unclued lights – we wonder why.
Of course there is the usual search for alcohol and Paddock passes the test with his ‘Nuns dispatching case of vintage wimples back to Lancashire mills’ – one of many clues with fairly complex wordplay and relatively obscure definitions. VESTALS, are the nuns, but we have to dispatch the ‘case’ of ‘vintage (VE) and back to Lancashire (E) and then ‘wimple’ (turn craftily) all of that to find that ‘mills’ can mean STEALS.
After the vintage it’s Drambuie. ‘Empty Drambuie bottles being packed together.’ What a fine clue and surface reading. The ‘being’ ENS goes into the DE of the DRAMBUIE giving us DENSE. There’s a ‘deceptively impure spirit’ to come and an ‘important person getting next round in’ – no doubt about it, Paddock retains his oenophile status.
My favourite clue was the simple ‘What’s in the hearts of those enamOured and betrOthed?’ Well it’s LOVE, of course.
Those extra letters appeared in bLack, conIfer, boOks, Knew, cEases, and neXt and gave LEXICO to go below the grid. (“Help, please, Google!”) Ah, a prototype of SCRABBLE and there was SCRABBLE in the grid so that explained the context and those 100 letters including the one Q, X, Z and J and of course two blanks. (We hope Paddock will tell us how he created this – did he use the hundred tiles of a Scrabble set?) The blanks come in the unclued lights, but what are the words meant to be and how do we enter the blanks? We have ?ET?NG and PO?NT? and a couple of Is still to fit into our grid and it’s head-scratching moment – but then a broad smile. POINT + BLANK and BLANK + ETING. Real words, and the ‘Plain’ and ‘Cloth’ of the title. We decided to leave the blanks, well, blank, rather than write BLANK into them as the most elegant solution.
What a fine compilation. Thank you Paddock.
If you would like to look at a full parsing of any of the Listener puzzles do hop over to https://listenercrossword.com/List_Puzzles.html and click on the “Notes” button next to the relevant puzzle in the list. When these Listener blogs appeared in “Listen With Others” that was the routine, and we have retained it here rather than duplicate.