It’s been the pantomime season and so here was a topical puzzle from Charybdis, with a neat little twist at the end. Some of the clues were rather tricky, even by EV standards, due to some obscure word meanings but there were sufficient starter clues to enable steady progress to be made.
I was very lucky in that, after the first pass through the clues, I had ??????O?O?HE? for 1ac and C?N?????L? for 14dn. My immediate thought was that 1ac ended with MOTHER and it wasn’t long before the full answer became apparent. 14dn was then obvious. With these two answers in place, the rest of the puzzle became much easier, though I was unable to get 10dn until I had all the checked letters. It was clearly an anagram of 14dn, as indicated in the preamble, but I failed initially to identify the ‘half word’ as ‘LL.
When the grid was initially completed, the clashes (starting at 30) gave:
M/U O U/M S E
G/J O U/V R/U D/L
M/U O U/M S E
which could have been resolved as:
MOUSE
GOURD
MOUSE
However, this did not take into account the ‘deduction’ and ‘(adding 26 to values where appropriate)’ given in the preamble. Assigning 1 – 26 to A – Z and subtracting the value of the clashing letter in the across clue from that in the down clue (adding 26 to the latter where necessary to ensure a positive integer result) produced:
HORSE
COACH
HORSE
This resolution of the clashes was to be entered in the grid and highlighted.
A most enjoyable challenge with a neat twist at the end. It must have taken quite some time to determine the clashes that would give both GOURD/MOUSE and COACH/HORSE, whilst retaining proper words as the initial entries, so thanks Charybdis.
*(XXX) – anagram
[x] – letter(s) unused
{x} – clashing letter
Across
1 FAIRY-GODMOTHER unclued
12 OCULAR [j]OCULAR (funny that’s a non-starter) – ‘water pump’ is a humorous term for ‘eye’ and ‘ocular’ is a facetious one
13 TORC TO[u]R (series of gigs excluding university) C (clubs)
15 LINGUIST LING (heather) *(SUIT)
17 MAS MA[qui]S – ‘qui’ = ‘who’ in French and ‘gite’ = ‘mas’ = French farmhouse
18 STOT S (succeeded) TOT (toddler)
19 OFTEN OF TEN (in a decade)
20 NOISES SES[s]ION reversed (period of music-making over, first of singles released)
23 ADD dd – Attention Deficit Disorder
24 EFTEST [j]EF[f] (letter concealed by Jeff) TEST (exam)
26 AGAHORS AGA{m}O{u}S A GAM (school) OU (where, in French) S[tudent]
29 FULCOAC FUL{g}O{u}{r} U (university) L (lecturer) GO in FUR (e.g. ermine)
31 HETOUR {d}ETOUR D[iversion] *(ROUTE) &lit
32 DAG dd – ‘caution’ = amusing person and ‘past sell-by date’ = obsolete
34 SHORSE S{m}O{u}SE M[erlin] in SOUSE (pickle) – ‘camelot’ = a pedlar and ‘in The Cape’ indicates South African
36 CLOUD CLOU (main point of interest) D (departs)
38 TALC hidden in ‘neaT ALCohol’
40 BOA BOA[sting] (bragging of having no sting)
41 TURBINAL T *(RIBU) NAL
42 REBS REB[el]S (insurgents taking wing)
43 IN ESSE [f]INESSE (expertise – force not required)
44 PRINCE CHARMING cd
Down
2 A BIT OFF A BI (an AC/DC) TOFF (Hooray Henry)
3 RUGOSELY *(GO SURELY)
4 YOUSE YO (call for attention) USE (the custom)
5 OUST [j]OUST (Jack not used in tournament competition)
6 MARTIAH MARTIA{l} paRTIAL (favouring) with ‘pa’ changed to ‘MA’
7 ORMOLH ORMOL{u} OR (gold) MO LU (two other metals) – molybdenum and lutetium
8 HOSTA A HOST (poet’s description of daffodils) with the words reversed (preposterous)
9 ERSE hidden in ‘ovERSEas’
10 I’LL NEED CAR unclued *(CINDERELLA)
11 IN SITU SIT (to pose) in [p]IN-U[p]
14 CINDERELLA unclued
16 TONGCE TONG{u}E T (tense) ON (playing) GUE (viol)
21 CAAEAT CA{v}EAT CAVE (hollow) AT (administrative trainee)
22 MOTORIUM MO[ra]TORIUM (Royal Artillery abandons suspension of activity)
25 TONTINE TON (fashion) TINE (point)
27 RORENT {m}O{m}ENT MEN (more than one worker) in MOT (test on car)
28 SUSTAIN US reversed STAIN (mark)
30 CUDAIC {j}UDAIC JUD (Judges) A[pocrypha] I C (see)
33 GOBBI B (large group of vitamins) in GOBI (Indian cauliflower) – hunchbacks (Italian)
35 HMBER {u}MBER dd
37 LEER dd
39 LUSH dd