We frequently meet Harribobs in the Magpie. This will be his ninth Listener crossword.
It doesn’t take long to see that, at least on the surface, this crossword is about soccer or FOOTIE as 16d tells us. (of course that might be a red herring – there could be a hidden theme – but that doesn’t seem likely as soccer teams appear.) ‘Valiant loss following nil-nil draw in beautiful game (6)’ gives F + OO + TIE and we decipher ‘Valiant loss’ to give ASTON VILLA. Beautiful game? One half of the Dash blogging team loathes the sport and all the time it fills in the media of the UK. For those of us living overseas, it has just about as much appeal as the US or Aussie sports – but sobeit. We have to live with that UK obsession. (The other half isn’t quite so allergic but regrets that Sheffield Wednesday didn’t make the last 16 of this Fantasy Football Cup. A “fleshy wife saddened” might have featured in the clue.)
We have to admire, though, this set of clues where 28 of the 40 clues were clearly soccer related. We even had to know about Law (Scottish striker), and Gary Linekar in order to solve a couple of clues. And how subtly some of those extra words were inserted! ‘Tickets you trade before start of match in capital’ (5) giving SALE + M with STOKE CITY emerging from TICKETS YOU*, for example. And so it goes: the grid fills.
Soon we had clubs: FULHAM, ARSENAL, CHELSEA, READING, EVERTON, WATFORD, PORT VALE, STEVENAGE, BARNSLEY, MORECAMBE, CARLISLE UNITED, LEYTON ORIENT, ASTON VILLA, SALFORD CITY, and STOKE CITY
And we were told in the very clear preamble that we had to ‘eliminate’ the members of the 15 losing teams. So we had to erase all 131 letters from those 15 clubs and we were left with WIGAN ATHLETIC*. (Is this Harribobs promoting his local team? I have a famous ‘Uncle Tom’ who belonged to Preston North End – far more significant, I believe!)
So the grid should be empty and WIGAN ATHLETIC are the winners – we move them to the winners’ area.
Does Harribobs retain his place in the Listener oenophiles? One would expect references to beer in a football crossword but he’s into the whisky (to get the W….Y of it letters for WEMBLEY). ‘Short logo set in case of Whisky showing steeplechase ground (7)’ That gave us CHELSEA in the letters of STEEPLECHASE. A bit of an odd clue surface-reading but the soccer and alcohol were undeniably there, so “Cheers, Harribobs!”