Inquisitor 1942: Tragic Consequences by Kruger

Kruger provides this week’s IQ challenge.

The preamble:

When the 2ac went to the 11 in 16, 25 disturbed 31 the 47: this led to tragedy and the voiced displeasure at 50 (4 words). Every clue contains an extra word of at least five letters that must be removed before solving; the first, middle or last letters of these words (equal numbers of each), in clue order, instruct solvers what to do to the completed grid.

Enumerations in brackets refer to the space available for answers. Ignoring blank cells, the grid contains only real words, proper nouns or phrases at all stages.

The plural form at 22 may be confirmed in Collins.

As usual, having read the preamble, we have no option but to start attempting to solve some clues taking note of the fact that all clues have an extra word and that there will be some empty cells. 10d was our first clue solved, but the solution is only 6 letters in 7 cells, so we couldn’t start to fill the grid without some crossers. 15ac was the next in, followed by 19ac, 7d and 8d.

We gradually worked our way round the grid, and ended up with several clues in the north-west corner and 18d, 38d and 37ac unsolved. We had established that the empty cells are all in 7th row either side of the unclued WA–A-E at 31ac, and were really worried that we had gone wrong somewhere with the unclued 50ac reading EEI-M-E-E- (4 words!).  We decided that we had to try to sort out the thematic message created by the unclued entries and concluded that 11d must be ZOO and 47ac is likely to be LION. Bert then dragged a distant memory from his childhood of a poem he had heard on the radio about a child called ALBERT being eaten by a LION at a ZOO. With a little electronic assistance, all was resolved – theme is ‘The Lion and Albert’, a monologue written around 1930 for Stanley Holloway by Marriott Edgar. The RAMSBOTTOMS visit BLACKPOOL ZOO, where ALBERT gets eaten by WALLACE the LION. His mother’s response is ‘EE, I AM VEXED’. Filling in the unclued entries enabled us to finish the missing clues.

Then it was a question of figuring out what we had to do to the grid from the first, last or middle letters of the extra words. This was no mean task, given the multiple choices, but we eventually worked out that the instruction is: CHANGE IT TO SHOW RESULT OF POKING STICK IN ANIMAL’S EAR. In the poem, Albert is eaten because he poked a stick in Wallace’s ear.

After a few abortive attempts to add letters to the six empty cells (‘WAS’ on the left and ‘ATE’ on the right?), we realised that WALLACE had to be split into the empty cells to swallow ALBERT from the row above.

If you would like to hear Stanley Holloway read the poem click HERE.