After a nine-year gap – the challenge and delight of a new Shackleton puzzle.
The preamble was quite a challenge in itself.
- One 2×2 block of cells is filled with abbreviations of four words removed from down clues – the words apply to four-generation male line
- Seven other blocks show four-letter words removed from across clues
- One of the abbreviations, which “reveals the hideous truth”, is written as a large letter in the first block.
- The letter values of the other blocks are summed and divided by 26 and the remainder converted back into a large letter. NB A=0 not 1.
- Corrections to misprints in the definitions in the remaining clues spell out two protagonists and an instruction relating to the grid.
- The initial letters of the extra word clues identify three connected shapes to be drawn which with the author’s name in 50 cells depict the work’s title and denouement.
- The name of a third participant is to be highlighted.
Goodness me! Shackleton puzzles are always thematically rich and operationally complex and this one did not disappoint! The clues, however, were by no means fiendish. The extra words weren’t too hard to spot so it was also possible to start identifying misprints and building up the messages.
NAPOLEON jumped out quite quickly as the first protagonist, and after a bit of checking EUGENIE was indeed the other. The instruction to CUT IN HALF AND REJOIN then took us into classic Listener scissor and paste territory – Shackleton’s habit of taking time over his puzzles and building in quality shows. The DASH team could learn from him – we do rather Dash ours off…
A good Listener needs a good red herring too – and this time it was Napoleon III. The extra words applying to male line – VICTOR, CREDITOR, MONSIEUR, FRENCH – just wouldn’t fit that the Napoleons. Time to go a-Googling, and to re-discover the (not very – was paid by the word) short story “The Spectacles” by Edgar Allan Poe.
The outrageous plot tells the story of how Napoleon Buonaparte Froissart changes his name to SIMPSON (title alert) to gain an inheritance. His vanity prevents him wearing the spectacles he needs, which causes his come-uppance when we falls for a very beautiful lady at the opera and marries her only to discover when she presses spectacles upon him that she is an old crone.
That is not the end of it though. She discloses that her first marriage was to a M. Moissart – and we remember that Napoleon is also vain about descent from the old chronicler of that name and amused that the members of his maternal line had had the names Croissart, Voissart and Moissart, all marrying very young. Solvers who relied on Wikipedia and didn’t look up the whole story may have been caught our here – another trap.
At this point the penny drops for Napoleon that his new bride is also his great-great-grandmother. Thankfully, the old lady then discloses that she as in America to find him, had decided to play him for a fool, organised a sham wedding, but was in fact making him her heir and arranged his real marriage to her beautiful young cousin, also a Mme (Stephanie) Lalande. (Usual note to self” remember the highlighting.)
So – after a stiff drink and some annoying letter and cell counting, which always goes wrong for us, the grid was duly filled in and cut up to reveal Napoleon’s spectacles, with POE as the nose-bar, perceiving that awful truth that his bride was Mme Moissart. It took a bit of head-scratching to decide on the M, but the logic of showing the revelation seems clear. A trickier potential ambiguity was that we could see two possible paths for the ovals: we preferred the red one as looking more like specs usually do, but both seem to meet the requirements.
That was quite a journey! Perhaps a rather silly story if a very amusing one, but why not – and Poe sold them by the million. After all that gazing though perhaps it’s also time we went to …
Many thanks to Shackleton. We’ll lift a glass of Madeira (17a) to your continued membership of our Oenophile Club and hope you don’t stay away so long next time.