Inquisitor 1509: Hexed by Nutmeg

A difficult one from Nutmeg this week, especially if poetry isn’t really your thing. So much to keep track of and so much cold solving to do if you didn’t know the perimeter theme. The rubric read:

One letter from each answer must be entered, out of place, in the outer edge of the grid; the perimeter should then be completed to give six associated names, clockwise from the top left corner. Their collective name must be highlighted in the completed grid, as must a seventh name loosely associated with the group (18 cells in all).

The problem with moving one letter is that you have no idea which one, but I soon realised that the moving letter could not be the last one on the right or bottom edge or the first one on the top or left edge. This enabled me to put at least some letters into the grid, particularly when the T of WHORT (30A) and the N of YEARN (32A) were adjacent, giving HEARTN for 19D with the E in the perimeter. TORPOR (23D) and STEEPER (28A) followed. I can’t point to a particular breakthrough for the rest, but the grid gradually filled with lots of two-letter alternatives in squares and few certainties in the perimeter.

A breakthrough eventually occurred when the W(or E) of WELSH (18A) and ER from 28A and 30A gave me a possible WATER in the first part of the second perimeter clue. Good “advice from AA” – DRINK WATER. By this time I had also surmised THOMAS from the letters of the last perimeter entry. Now there was a John Drinkwater, playwright and Edward Thomas, a poet, so I googled “Drinkwater and Thomas writers” and the article headed “The Georgian poets Abercrombie, Brooke, Drinkwater, Gibson and …” came up. This looked promising and referred to the Georgian Poets, published in a series of five anthologies entitled Georgian Poetry 19??-19?? ( the George was George V). Now the names  GIBSON, ABERCROMBIE and BROOKE all fitted the perimeter along with DRINKWATER and THOMAS. I had five of the six names, but could not find any reference to the last one (five letters starting at the top left) in the Georgian Poets group.

So I went back to the original google and looked further down the list. There was an article about the DYMOCK POETS, a group of poets comprising  Robert Frost, Lascelles Abercrombie, Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, and John Drinkwater, some of whom lived near the village of Dymock in Gloucestershire in the period between 1911 and 1914. Eleanor Farjeon, who was involved with Edward Thomas, also visited. So the missing entry was FROST.

Usually the diagonals contain the missing information to be highlighted, and on the top right to bottom left diagonal was DYMOCK POETS and on the top left to bottom right diagonal was FARJEON.

Job done. I now know that if I had googled Thomas and Drinkwater writers (just transposing the names), I would have gone directly to the Dymock Poets without the distraction of the Georgian poets, and that if I had read the entry for John Drinkwater carefully enough it would have led me directly to Dymock. Ah well.

Thanks to Nutmeg for quite a hard workout and a well constructed grid.