Dave Hennings’ Crossword Database tells us that this will be Karla’s sixth Listener crossword. He challenges and entertains us too in the Magpie, EV and IQ series.
What are we in for? Some of those inane ‘Knock, knock’ jokes “Knock, knock, Who’s there, Yah, Ya who? No I use Google’, or that Karla one? Knock, knock, who’s there, Karla, Karla who? Kar’l arrive before a bicycle. No, let’s be serious and get down to solving. What a preamble (but great! No jumbles.)
Clashing letters in seven cells (and, intriguingly, we have to ‘enter one of the two letters appropriately’), just eighteen clues where we will remove a letter (not in the definition), letters that will indicate six characters to ‘supplement the first six resolved clashes’ and a character to replace a letter adjacent to the seventh. We will produce a ‘sequence’ related to two names and a three word phrase that complete the perimeter (we have noticed that three sides of the grid are unclued!
We have to join those cells to produce a curve and change another letter to show a shape suited to that three-word phrase that we will find in the perimeter. A word ‘thus formed’ that will relate the phrase and sequence will finally be highlighted. Ouch! Nothing to do but solve!
Karla’s clues keep us on our toes. Some gentle ones produce a smile; ‘Did groom inject drug into aged bovine rump? (8)’ We put an E into NEAT END givingus NEATENED (Did groom). ‘Chubby thing beset by accidents (3)’ IDE is hidden there and Chambers tells us it’s a sort of Chub. ‘Former veep to write about Ecuador (5)’ We turn Ecuador (EC) around after PEN to get PENCE.
Then, happily we spot that Karla retains his membership of the Listener elite oenophiles with, ‘Correctly pitched cask aboard ship with scratched edges (6, two words) TUN (that cask “Cheers, Karla!”) goes into [l]INE[r] to give IN TUNE. We struggle with a few clues; ADOPTEES ‘ Children taken in a game over river (8)’ Somehow we have to produce DOP to go between the A TEES and Chambers tells us that a GAM is a POD! One of the extra letters E.
We laboriously extract ASTERISK P E L I C EQUAL as extra letters and find our clashes in seven cells (IDE/KISSERS, MUDFISH/INTER NOS, IN TUNE/INVEST, FERNIER/PENCE, LIFE PEER/CAD, SERIN/FARADAY, GLAIR/EOAN. If we join these with a curve, we produce a question mark and, at this stage, the puzzle is producing a large one! Where is this going?
The perimeter has produced -R-NK-RAKE-N-ICOF-RMIW-E-E-SE-ERYB-D-. It needed the scientific half of the Numpty team to see that we had here FRANK DRAKE, ENRICO FERMI, WHERE IS EVERYBODY? – The Fermi paradox and the Drake equation. Co-solver Google explains : The Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation are complementary tools for analysing the likelihood of extraterrestial life. The Drake Equation estimates the number of active, intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way, while the Fermi Paradox highlights the contradiction between high probability estimates and the total lack of evidence for them.
So I had to use those clashes to create the Drake Equation, N = R* × fp × ne × fl × fi × fc, using those 18 extra letters to give the subscripts and change the N (of EOAN/GLAIR) to 0/zero (the likelihood in the Fermi paradox), producing the dot of the question mark and giving PARADOX to highlight. All the numbered entries are real words, too – the stamp of the master.
And what about the title? ‘Knock, knock, who’s there?’ Perhaps ‘no one’. How rewarding that Karla has used the platform of the Listener puzzle to address one of humanity’s most existential questions: are we alone? OH DEAR – maybe we are!
Those words OH DEAR, VERIFY were the ones Karla used to prompt us to confirm the unchecked letters of the perimeter. That was an astonishing aspect of the grid construction. How did Karla manage to find a symmetrical arrangement of perimeter letters in a string that would spell words that could be arranged into something thematic?
Stunning compilation, Karla!