A setter new to the Inquisitor, and who, as it happens, is ‘in partnership’ with the editor. (It turns out that she is not the setter, but that it was some “Mr H”. See comment 29 on this year’s annual review.)
Preamble: A jocular version of the motto used by a group “given” by one part of a thematic figure suggests how five out of six other parts are to be entered in the grid. The clue to each of these five entries consists of definitions for the three components of each full answer plus wordplay identifying which component is to be entered. The thematic figure’s surname must be highlighted, and the sixth other part – which cannot be similarly treated – must be entered in the central cell.
The group, also to be highlighted, may be identified by choosing between clashing letters in 16 symmetrically-disposed cells (leaving many non-words in the grid). The letter in a seventeenth cell must be substituted by two others.
The real name of a person linked to the group suggests where solvers should look in the grid for the motto, plus the nature of the group’s attraction. This name must be written under the grid.
All clues, other than those to the five parts, are normal.
Well, that’s about as clear as Finnegans Wake on first reading (and second, and third, … )
I thought that this was a bit of a pig (Chambers: “something very difficult (sl)”). I got two of the ‘special’ entries on the first run through – BRACK at 12a and OMEN at 41d – but without the definitions of the other two components. Some of the clashes were identified, and when I had quite a few of them they seemed to form a distinct pattern – the placements were not simply symmetric but radiated out from the central cell, in chains of 4, just off the main diagonals. And of course that helped, knowing which letter(s) to ignore in intersecting words. I plodded on, and with the grid about 75-80% complete and two more ‘specials’ found – HATH at 13a and FAIR at 6d – also without the other definitions, I reread the preamble for the umpteenth time, and it still made little sense.
I was ‘having issues’ with some of the clues: PIED as a verb in 39d, didn’t like “Dirty Den” in 48a, the ARBITRAL (adjective) at 11d clued by “Judgment” (noun), and a few others, in particular the clue for CHASERS at 49a – I suppose that some solvers watch daytime TV. Anyway, I now had CAR at 14a from the crossing answers (ARBITRAL couldn’t be anything else), and finished off the lower right quadrant with LONELIEST at 40a (why is LOT a “collection of people”?), TADS at 43d (a common enough word but “Canadian” put me off), PUSSER at 35d (“no limit” indicating removing both ends of PRESS-UPS?), and the aforementioned (dreadful) CHASERS at 49a. I had spotted DENCH in the bottom row, and that had brought to mind M as a possibility for the central cell (since it has only one component, not three), but I thought nothing more about it.
I think that it must have been a concentrated grid-stare for half an hour after lunch on Wednesday that finally – finally – I saw that the clue at 12a led to LADY BRACKNELL. Wikipedia gives Hon. Gwendolen FAIRFAX as another character in Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, but that led nowhere. Fortunately, ANNE HATHAWAY at 13a came to my rescue, and, along with plain old MRS FAIRFAX at 6d, that was enough to reveal that they were all characters played by Judi DENCH in various films. Other roles were MONA CARVELL (14a) and PHILOMENA LEE (41d).
I reread the preamble yet again, and realised my misunderstanding: “the sixth other part” (M in the central cell) and the “one part ‘giving’ the group” were not in fact the same part … so the motto has nothing to do with M or James Bond! (How foolish I felt.)
This blog is in serious danger of over-running so let’s cut to the chase. After a couple of false starts, I saw the motto WE NEVER CLOSED, which was plenty of fodder for Google to bring me to the Windmill Theatre, and the “jocular version” WE NEVER CLOTHED – a quick check informs me that Judi Dench played the eponymous role in Mrs Henderson Presents, a film about the theatre. Just have to resolve the clashes to reveal the group (in the pattern which is now obviously windmill sails) and decide what name to write below the grid. The former (easy to see when you know what you’re looking for) is THE WINDMILL GIRLS, the latter … well, not the owner, Laura Henderson, nor the manager Vivian Van Damm, since neither of them “suggests where solvers should look in the grid for the motto, plus the nature of the group’s attraction”. So could it be Lord Cromer, Lord Chamberlain at the time with the power to censor theatre and hence the nudity of the Windmill Girls? Clicking the link to him takes us to the page of Rowland Baring, 2nd Earl of Cromer; the surname is clearly “the nature of the group’s attraction”, and splitting up the full name as “Row L and Baring” further “suggests where solvers should look in the grid for the motto”.
Thanks Jetdoc – pretty clever stuff, all in all, but I’m afraid that I have to say I didn’t find it that enjoyable – maybe if it hadn’t been my turn to blog I could have relaxed a little more.
My next blog is scheduled for the puzzle to be published on 30-March – will we have Brexited? With a deal? May’s deal? No deal? No Brexit? I will do my best to take “No Blog” off the table.
| Across | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Clue | Answer | Wordplay |
| 1 | It stabilises everything when used for green sandwich filling (7) | BALLAST | ALL (everything) in BAST (inner bark of plants) see Comment 17 for an improved parsing: ALL AS replacing L(ettuce) in BLT |
| 6 | A long way home, needing a meal (6) | FARINA | FAR (a long way) IN (home) A |
| 12 | Eleanor Rigby’s intro player covers female title flaw (5) | LADY BRACKNELL | R(igby) in BACK (player) |
| 13 | What henchman’s carrying bears very old Princess out of here (4) | ANNE HATHAWAY | (w)HAT H(enchman) |
| 14 | Stomach buggy? Monkey contracted affliction (3) | MONA CARVELL | CAR(e) (affliction) |
| 15 | A host of branches? (4) | ARMY | ARMY (of branches?) |
| 18 | Renovate outside of church ahead of Spenserian noble (9) | DOUCEPERE | DO UP (renovate) around CE (church) ERE (before, ahead) |
| 19 | Garland with parts ready for Angolan (4) | LWEI | LEI (garland) around W(ith) |
| 20 | Fuel for heating a ground, good in lead (6, 2 words) | GAS OIL | A SOIL (ground) after G(ood) |
| 22 | Sweet that’s soft and mixes in well (7) | FONDANT | [AND]* in FONT (source, well) |
| 26 | i’s got one’s own back (3) | DOT | TOD< (one’s own) |
| 27 | Comparatively good-natured head of news, topping chap (5) | NICER | N(ews) ICER (someone applying icing, OR someone who kills) |
| 28 | Switching terms of one, big man entrusted document (6) | ESCROW | OS (outsize, big) CREW (man) with O(n)E switched |
| 29 | Repeatedly denied source of inhalers, I am uncomfortable with advanced this? (6) | ASTHMA | [(I) AM A(dvanced) TH(i)S]* &lit. |
| 31 | Mode of existence, say? (5) | STATE | double definition |
| 34 | Shake dry? (3) | SEC | SEC (second, shake) |
| 36 | Clothes-line springing loose hits this Galway lass? (7) | COLLEEN | [CLOTHES-LINE ¬ HITS]* |
| 37 | Name linked to Universal acquired by Disney – but it isn’t Pinewood! (6) | WALNUT | N(ame) U(niversal) in WALT (Disney) |
| 38 | Strange soft buttocks (4) | RUMP | RUM (strange) P (soft) |
| 40 | Extremely destitute old collection of people consuming slow-to-ripen fruit (9) | LONELIEST | LOT (collection of people) around NELIES (slow-to-ripen fruit) |
| 44 | Bones in case returned with it (4) | OSSA | SO< (in case) SA (sex appeal, it) |
| 45 | Anywhere but South London? (3) | WEN | W,E,N,S (anywhere) ¬ S(outh) |
| 46 | The best possible, almost always (4) | EVER | EVER(y) (the best possible) |
| 47 | Near a cathedral precinct (5) | CLOSE | double definition |
| 48 | Ed’s language guided by “dirty” licensee (6) | LEDDEN | LED (guided) DEN (landlord, character in the BBC soap opera EastEnders) |
| 49 | Governess and Sinnerman say “whisky” and “gin”? (7) | CHASERS | The Chase is a quiz show on ITV (which no-one I know has ever heard of) |
| Down | |||
| No. | Clue | Answer | Wordplay |
| 1 | Under duvet, perhaps a little sweat (4) | BEAD | A in BED (under duvet, perhaps) |
| 2 | Having embarked on moving rector out of the country (6) | ABROAD | ABOARD (having embarked) with R(ector) moving |
| 3 | Where they’ll be trying to scrawl rubbish about union (9) | LAWCOURTS | [TO SCRAWL]* around U(nion) |
| 4 | I add to frolics with college clown around (7, 2 words) | ACT DIDO | [I ADD TO]* around C(ollege) |
| 5 | Leave out the team captain (4) | SKIP | double definition |
| 6 | For auditor, do just copy married title (4) | MRS FAIRFAX | homophone FARE (do) |
| 7 | Out of Olympia, the natural-born apotheosis of wisdom (6) | ATHENA | (Olympi)A THE NA(tural) |
| 8 | Items presented by Juncker anguish May, deal last resort (4) | RHYL | (Juncke)R (anguis)H (Ma)Y (dea)L |
| 9 | Can I see him dashing to fix a hundred freezers? (11, 2 words) | ICE MACHINES | [CAN I SEE HIM]* around C (hundred) |
| 10 | A study in Teesside, Wearside and Tyneside languages en masse (6) | NA-DENE | A DEN (study) in NE (Teesside, Wearside and Tyneside) |
| 11 | Judgment in Glasgow’s court – depressed head’s ego given boost in hearing (8) | ARBITRAL | BAR (court) with first letter later, TRIAL (hearing) with I (ego) earlier |
| 16 | Ridiculous claims about America not forgetting strange desert phenomenon (11, 2 words) | MUSICAL SAND | [CLAIMS]* around US (America) AND (not forgetting) |
| 17 | Resist an order to make god heartless (4) | DEFY | DE(i)FY (make god) |
| 21 | Old winch is getting into scrape (5) | HOISE | IS in HOE (scrape) |
| 23 | Recess kept up by angle iron (5) | ORIEL | (ang)LE IRO(n) rev. |
| 24 | Patches of white crude oil? Gallons absorbed during curious visit (9) | VITILIGOS | [OIL G(allons)]* in [VISIT]* |
| 25 | Scribble over antique key during row (8) | BESCRAWL | ESC (key, computing) in BRAWL (row) |
| 30 | Bone turning up in part of ear (7) | SCAPULA | UP< in SCALA (part of ear) |
| 32 | Syrup running out and stale (6) | TOUPEE | [TOU]* PEE (urine, stale) {def.: syrup of figs, wig} |
| 33 | Once again experience some of those vile rakehells from the south (6) | RELIVE | (thos)E VILE R(akehells) rev. |
| 34 | Poles supporting hollow iron bars (4) | INNS | N,S (poles) after I(ro)N |
| 35 | Naval regulation: no limit to climbing exercises (6) | PUSSER | (p)RESS-UP(s)< (exercises) |
| 39 | Like cherries and apples, regularly more than one colour (4) | PIED | using “to (put in a) pie” as a verb? |
| 41 | “Ladies only” sign sheltered little Prince (4) | PHILOMENA LEE | O MEN (no men = ladies only) |
| 42 | Take time off to counsel a head (4) | EACH | TEACH (counsel) ¬ T(ime) |
| 43 | Canadian pieces you shouldn’t have on dual screen (4) | TADS | TA (thanks, you shouldn’t have) DS (dual screen) |
|
|
|||
I have no idea where even to find The Inquisitor, but I am glad that puzzles of this complexity exist. And JetDoc’s blog read like a detective story. It was worth it for that alone!
A few years ago, Jetdoc and I discussed the fact that people kept asking us why we didn’t set crosswords. We agreed that, because we solve (and test solve) so many great crosswords, we’d want to be as good as the best from the start, and so we’d definitely never set a crossword
I don’t know why Jetdoc was worried – I have to say I’m not a fan of barred crosswords, let alone those with instructions that require reading several times and then have a lie down. I had several (on and off) goes anyway and solved 17 clues. Of them, i marked 15a and 37a as favourites because they both made me smile
Congratulations to Jetdoc – can we have a 15 x 15 next time please? – and many thanks to HolyGhost for explaining the ‘structions and the clues I didn’t solve
I thought this was a brilliant puzzle. The instructions were certainly daunting, and had to be read very carefully, but there was nothing unfair. And as Roger at 1 hints, the final tracking from Judi Dench, through her range of characters including Mrs Henderson to the Windmill, and then to Rowland Baring, was just like solving a detective mystery, with the shaded shape an added nicety. We’re fortunate to have Google though! I too paused at the references to Dirty Den and The Chaser. From my perspective the former is now legitimate GK, whereas the latter isn’t, though the solution was obvious. But of course, as always, one person’s GK is another person’s blind spot. Many thanks and congratulations to Jetdoc, and thanks to HolyGhost for the splendidly thorough blog.
Yes, this was a hard slog. With no special clues solved and not many clashes spotted, I saw WE NEVER CLOSED and (for a wonder) connected it with the Windmill Theatre and the “jocular version”. Expecting it to be all plain sailing from there was a follish assumption: it took ages to make the Judi Dench connection between Mrs Henderson and the “unclad parts”.
ARBITRAL seemed OK to me with the definition read as “Judgment in Glasgow’s” (of a judgment in Glasgow, so adjectival). I assumed the named CHASERS were steeplechasing horses — which can be called anything — until Wikipedia revealed the horrid reality.
Thanks to Jetdoc for remarkable construction and HG for perseverance!
@1: The Inquisitor appears in the weekend i newspaper every Saturday. Only a quid and worth it for this alone.
I agree this was a very good debut. Tough but fair and certainly ambitious, indeed there’s arguably enough here for two separate puzzles. Gave up on bscksolvong the Judy Dench roles after Anne Hathaway and Philomena revealed what was going on, but think I managed everything else.
Thanks.
That preamble. 🙂 Daunting at first, but as it turns out… Accessible if you tackled it a bit at a time, and didn’t panic. Certainly at the tougher end of the Inquisitor scale, though mostly for the endgame which was certainly ambitious. Satisfying to finish, and with one PDM after another. Congratulations to Jetdoc on an enjoyable IQ debut.
ITV will be disappointed to hear that one of their top shows is apparently quite obscure in crossword solving circles. 🙂
There was too much going on in this puzzle for it to be enjoyable – a case of being too clever for its own good and the setter trying too hard to impress. It would have been better without all the Dench stuff.
Well, I filled the grid (wasnt sure about TADS) and identified all the clashes and had a puzzle looking a bit like the Moulin Rouge.
But thats where I have to leave it to you lot.
BUT if you could kindly blog some of FW, I’d be grateful HG.(I think I parsed the first page by joining it to the last one)
I agree with Tony@7 that this was a bit too clever for its own good. There were essentially two themes and it took a Google search to identify the Judi Dench connection. Finding Dench in the grid immediately led to the other theme via “We never closed” in the row above and the resolution of the clashes. The end game took longer than the solve and I was still left with being unable to satisfy the instruction “a seventeenth cell must be substituted by two others”. It seemed to me that the solve was complete without the need to do this. I have re-read the preamble carefully and still cannot see that it is telling us to generate the jocular version of the motto by this device. I felt it had to be something to do with the central square being the hub of the windmill but couldn’t think what.
A challenging solve so thanks to Jetdoc and to HG for the blog and explaining some of the parsings.
Overcomplicated preamble. Could not be bothered to solve it after reading it. I don’t regret this.
Stumper @3: what is GK?
copmus @8: I don’t understand your final paragraph – particularly FW …
I managed to fill the grid, give or take a couple of cells, and identify all of the clashes. Despite concerted effort, I failed to make sense of the clashes and remained baffled by the instructions and five thematic clues and gave up at the start of this week. Thanks to Terrier for explaining what was going on. I could have continued for weeks and been none the wiser. It feels like there have been a few puzzles recently that have had overly complex and elaborate instructions and content, but maybe that’s just me.
Some very nice clues I thought. Kicked myself at the explanation for CHASERS. I know the show (I auditioned for the first series) but failed to spot what was going on.
Thanks to Jetdoc and HG for the blog.
This was a DNF for us – the first for a long time. We stared at the grid for ages having looked at mottos that could possibly be linked to Judy Dench. There was a recent one about ‘fish of the day’ coined by cast members of A Winter’s Tale which unsurprisingly we could not locate in the grid. At this time we still hadn’t identified the windmill words.
Joyce suddenly noticed We Never Closed and the rest sort of fell into place although we never did manage to sort out the missing name.
It was not the most enjoyable IQ we have solved but very clever. However, on reflection it did feel as if it was like solving two crosswords. One of the themes – Dench or the Windmill Girls would have been enough to keeo us happy. We really liked the two letters in place of one for closed and clothed.
Well done Jetdoc for your debut and HG for the blog.
I failed on two clues, 48a and 49a (I thought a chaser was the half pint you had after the whisky) and hence couldn’t see DENCH in the final grid.
Well, that’s my excuse.
Got The Windmill Girls and the Motto, and read all about it, including the film and Lord Cromer, but couldn’t see the connection.
Only solved 1 of the 5, Anne Hathaway.
Close, but no cigar.
I got all of this apart from the last name – I just gave up and put Van Damm in, as he was ‘linked’ to the group…Lord Cromer may be ‘linked’ to them in history, but at the time he was (at least, officially) opposed to them?
I would echo some of the comments on the preamble (and end game) being overly complicated, but maybe that is because I didn’t get to the end! It seems many did, so it wasn’t completely intractable…
On the title, I took this as ‘I’ (jetdoc, Mrs Henderson) ‘give you…’ (presents…).
I think Stumper @3 is referring to General Knowledge (GK). No idea what Copmus’ FW is @8 though!…
(And at least the Windmill’s sails weren’t ‘spinning’, as per the recent escalator/staircase!…)
I’d love to think 1a was intended to be parsed as ALL (everything) + AS (when) replacing the lettuce in a BLT (used for green sandwich filling), ’cause that’s what made me groan when I got it. There was much the same kind of groan when poor Rowland’s name finally clicked – the unmistakable mark of a pun so bad it’s good. How does reality manage to get away with the sort of thing that, if you encountered it in a story, would be panned as being too on-the-nose? Baring? Really?!
Now, I do have to admit that I was another solver who had some trouble getting from the Windmill Theatre to Dench’s roles; I had all the clashes resolved, the motto modified and Baring below the grid, but even with the five relevant entries deduced from the definition bits of their clues, it wasn’t until my desperation-fuelled readthrough of the theatre’s Wikipedia page got to the very bottom that I twigged what was going on. Having given it some thought after I eventually polished things off, I concluded that the fault was at my end rather than there being anything wrong with the puzzle per se, with the preamble justifying the aforementioned connection quite fairly upon further consideration. I decided I should have reasoned thus: to enact the “jocular version of the motto”, you need some folk to, uh, undress. They’re linked by being “part(s) of a thematic figure”, and this figure’s a person because they’ve a surname that needs highlighting. This suggests that “parts” needs a little cryptic interpretation and that should be enough to point you in the direction of an actor.
…and now looking at it again today, I think I can see why this was a little bit awkward in practice; it has the solution path backwards with respect to what the ordering of the preamble actually suggests. Because the preamble starts by explaining which clues aren’t normal, as it presumably should, it sets up the Dench side of the puzzle before the Baring bit, and though it does begin with the motto, which I’d consider to be the natural in, I’m not sure I could have understood the five thematic clues without having both the resolved clashes and the modified motto beforehand. But then again, it is all there in the preamble, however daunting it may look, and I can’t really think of any rewording that wouldn’t end up just spelling it all out…
Overall though, I definitely enjoyed this puzzle, in particular the style of cluing – as per crypticsue@2, stuff like 37a really had me smiling, although I think 45a might just clinch it for me. Two comments on cluing – first, HG, informally LOT for “a collection of people” is a thing (think “a sorry lot”), but I’ll concede it doesn’t appear to be in Chambers. Secondly, my dear gran is a big fan of The Chase, so that bit of GK went in fine, but “Dirty Den” was far beyond me. Just goes to show how “general” knowledge is never universal…
(also: copmus presumably means Finnegan’s Wake by FW, as referenced at the very beginning of the blog…)
Panthera @17
I had the same solution for 1a 🙂
I enjoyed this very much. It was quite a challenge to unravel the complex theme and even to follow the somewhat cryptic language of the preamble, but I got there in the end.
I thought the clue for 49a CHASERS was ok. I knew of the Governess and Sinnerman, but even if I hadn’t there are many people who do. For 48a LEDDEN, I was lucky to remember “dirty” Den, knowing virtually nothing about soap operas.
The thematic design was brilliant, the various components being neatly linked and incorporated. The symmetry of the grid was admirable considering the high proportion of checked letters. (Actually, two five-letter entries had only two checked letters each, increasing to four when the clashing letters were resolved.)
The preamble was a puzzle in itself, as as everyone says. The first sentence took some unravelling even with ‘part’ interpreted properly, but eventually it helped to confirm parts of the theme. The phrase ‘a seventeenth cell’ was confusing at first because it was really just ‘another cell’ requiring its own unique treatment. I sympathise with Howard L for being confused by it too.
The theme was certainly ambitious, some think overdone, even, but I thought the dual theme, with a thematic link via one of the roles of Judi Dench, was superb. I also thought, however, that there was enough thematic material without that extra bit about Lord Cromer at the end, my main point being that one needs the motto to know where to find the name, not the other way round. But I suppose there was fun to be had with the name Baring, in the light of what his ruling was about.
Finally, I wonder if the setter realised that the sixteen clashing letter-pairs can be resolved in another way to form the phrase “Playwrights’ wives”. Quite a promising idea if Anne Hathaway was one’s first thematic discovery! Was that alternative phrase planted there as a clever piece of misdirection?
Many thanks to Jetdoc for such an interesting puzzle and to HolyGhost for his comprehencsive blog and comments.
Well, I got that we were in Dench World (though I couldn’t be bothered to work out all the roles); and thanks to the high visibility of “We Never Closed” (and google), in particular the world of Mrs Henderson (I was familiar with the film). But there I stopped.
It’s definitely brilliant, but is it too much? For me, yes: I lost the hunger, partly thanks to the complexity of the preamble (all those parts!), to work out who the figure was and what the windmill anagram might be. I thought I’d done enough for one week.
Thanks to Jetdoc for the ingenuity (I do look forward to another) and to the hard-working HG.
I wasn’t a huge fan of this, but I still enjoyed it well enough. I was disappointed at the end that there didn’t seem to be any particular connection between the 6 parts – Judi Dench has surely played many recognisable roles, but the preamble seemed to suggest that these were somehow special ones and I’m sure if I had a sharp enough pencil I could have written any of them in the central cell. I got the Windmill Girls first and spent a long time looking for someone called Millar connected to them (diagonal starting halfway down the 2nd from right column). I thought the three-part clues were too vague to solve without further hints – the only one I got was Anne Hathaway, which led to too many different possibilities to be helpful.
OPatrick @21
I think the way in which the five roles were ‘special’ was that the grid entry for each one consisted of a word extracted centrally from each full name, or, to put it another way, the grid entry is what is left after the full name is unclothed equally from each side. I solved my first two of these without knowing this, but having made that discovery I got the other three more easily. The sixth obviously has to be M (I thought), because there is no directive to put anything other than a single letter there.
I filled the grid and got most of the end game but eventually lost interest and gave up as it was turning into more of a trawl through Google than a crossword puzzle. I did find the clues a bit of a slog but an enjoyable one. I like having to slog through the clues. If I fill the grid too easily I feel cheated somehow. I found the clues unusual but didn’t have any issues with them. I like a bit of variation and would sacrifice technical purity for additional interest any time.
The main problem for me was that this puzzle tried to include too much. As several people here say it was impressive how much Jetdoc fits in here, but for me the result felt like watching a circus performer play 16 musical instruments at once: the feat is impressive but the end result is not as musical as one instrument played to its full potential. Or perhaps a desert that contains all the cook’s favorite ingredients: each one is wonderful but not all in the same dish at the same time please.
I say all of this as hopefully useful feedback not as a complaint. This was a good start to setting for the IQ and I hope Jetdoc comes back soon with another puzzle.
Thanks to all.
… I mean a dessert containing ingredients not a desert
I thought this one would provoke a lot of comments! I sympathise with those who thought there was just too much going on, as we felt more than once that we were getting to the end of our te(a)ther – and that was just reading the intro – but it was fair and do-able if you had the time and patience. There was originality in the five special clues and most importantly there was no ambiguity about any of the final elements. And it was a lot of fun.
There were some excellent clues. I concur with Panthera@17 about 37a and 45a, whilst 32d also raised a smile. I do get tired, though, of people carping about general knowledge elements in clues. At the risk of sounding like the PM, I’ll repeat what I have said here before more than once on this subject. It is surely reasonable to assume that solvers of thematic puzzles have a wide range of interests and therefore good general knowledge. If not, how are we expected to identify the themes (although of course none of us will be familiar with ALL of them)? Taking 48a as an example, “Dirty Den” is one of the most (in)famous characters in television history and you don’t need to have watched Eastenders to be aware of him, not least because the actor who played him was frequently in the news because of his colourful off-screen life, including serving ten years for murder before becoming an actor. Having seen DEN clued by “study” or “lair” hundreds of times, I was delighted by this one. Surely we should welcome and encourage such originality from our setters.
Similarly, it is also reasonable to assume that many solvers will also be quizzers, whether taking part in the pub or watching on tv or both. The Chase is one of the best on tv (teatime rather than daytime, when there are some pretty poor ones) and features professional quizzers taking on the public. This reminds me that one John Henderson got a credit on “Only Connect” (BBC2 Monday evenings) recently as an “additional question-setter”. Could this be our editor?
Nobody else has mentioned this, but I wonder if anybody else spotted BROADS and MUSIC in the second and third columns? As these might be thought to refer to “the nature of the group’s attraction”, we had an interesting but fruitless search for an actor/comedian with the real name Sidebottom as they were roughly at the side of the grid and the motto was almost at the bottom. It was always rather unlikely, being imprecise and with “broads” having derogatory connotations, and as it turned out the name that was required gave a much more precise location.
Congratulations to Jetdoc on a very impressive debut.
I have never seen The Chase, I don’t even have a television. Even so I had heard the program mentioned somewhere and figured out that the people in the clue (who I had not heard of) were probably involved as “chasers”.
Now that the official solution is out I’ve seen for the first time how the group’s name (The Windmill Girls) has been indorporated in such an aesthetically pleasing way going along the four sails of the windmill away from the centre. I just treated the sixteen clashing letter-pairs as an unsolvable anagram that had to be checked off letter by letter on finding the group name.
Terrier @25 gave me some further food for thought. I would have commented already on the originality of several of the clues as well as the use of novel definitions such as those using slang (e.g. ‘syrup’) and wordy but accurate definitions (e.g. “but it isn’t Pinewood!”) if I hadn’t thought my original comment @19 had gone on long enough. I agree that the five special clues were excellent – and impressively succinct.
On the level of general knowledge required to solve clues and spot themes, I generally go along with what Terrier says. I was lucky, though, to have heard of Dirty Den, because I have never seen East Enders, and the clue craftily avoided using the (giveaway?) capital D (saying “dirty” instead). My level of GK seems to be below the average of solvers who regularly contribute to this page, and that often means that I don’t identify themes and have to stop, because I have no taste either for delving into a topic I know nothing about (or have no interest in) or for googling ‘at random’ to see if a theme emerges from an otherwise completed puzzle that has already given me satisfaction. My success rate is rather low, almost always for that reason, but my satisfaction rate isn’t!