Listener No 4866 It’s Not Involved by Quinapalus

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Quinapalus gives us seven lines of preamble.

Quinapalus is a familiar (and much appreciated) name to myriads of crossword compilers and solvers. Who hasn’t used his system to help with those fearsome keyword hunts or to find, say, words that read backwards or have three consecutive vowels, and so on?

His preamble tells us that we are going to ‘permutate’ nine extra words and that they will spell out a ‘location’. We must join the centres of a number of empty cells with straight lines, ‘in one case respecting an adjective spelled out by the cells visited, to show an item from a set associated with the location’s proprietor’ and complete the three unclued entries with four letters rotated or reflected and two others adjusted to greater quantity, to produce a message connected to the location.

This week’s blogger, almost ironically, is with family in Ellinikon, a delightful suburb of Athens, down on the coast near Glyfada. (Take a look at https://experiencepark.theellinikon.com.gr/en/ – an astonishing greening of what used to be the airport area before the new airport was constructed 30 kilometres to the east).

Once I had seen that PAL HAKA PAPA spelled ALPHA KAPPA, we were on home ground. How very clever of Quinapalus but what a fine hint!

So those nine extra words, PAL HAKA PAPA LAPHELD TEAT EMPUSA OIL AILANTO HAP when correctly permutated, gave us ALPHA KAPPA ALPHA DELTA ETA MU ETA IOTA ALPHA which spelled out for me AKADEMEIA

Wow, what a giveaway if only I had realized it earlier, and Google, my friendly solving mate, as usual, explains to me that that warning to the non-geometric of us tells us that we must stay out of Plato’s AKADAMEIA.

ΑΓΕΩΜΕΤΡΗΤΟΣ ΜΗΔΕΙΣ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ

“Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter here”

Of course there was a smile. Why was OMEGA adjusted ‘to greater quantity? Aah, penny drop! It became O + MEGA. My Greek sister-in-law was able to bail me out and explain that ancient Greek used capital Greek letters for inscriptions (not, therefore the lower-case omega that appeared if we simply rotated the Ws)

I needed to learn that a tetrahedron was one of Plato’s solids and, with a second smile, saw that my grid had spelled the adjective DOTTED for that fifth line.

And the third smile? Does Quinapalus retain his oenophile status? In 7d, he’s ‘drunk’, then there are ‘Drinks in Staines adulterated, followed by an ‘abstainer’. Hmmm! But finally 24d gives us TIPSY. Cheers, Quinapalus!