Kruger is one of our regular setters. Hard but fair is his normal offering, so I look forward to this one.
Clues are given in alphabetical order of their answers which must be entered where they will fit. However, clues for four entries remain unseen – for thematic reasons. Wordplay in each down clue yields an extra letter not entered in the grid. In normal clue order, these letters indicate how the across clues, also in normal clue order, can guide solvers to complete the puzzle.
So several stages: 1) alphabetical jigsaw, 2) re-arrange clues into normal clue order, 3) read and obey hidden messages.
The key clues here seemed to be the four with 9 and 8 letter answers. An inspection of the grid indicated that they were all down clues and that the grid was symmetrical. I only managed to solve one of the four (LINGULAR) to start with and, in fact, the two 9 letter clues were the last ones to be parsed. So they were not as significant to the jigsaw process as I expected. I worked through the clues, finding a large number at the beginning starting with the letter A.
I tried LINGULAR in the column 4 eight letter slot and filled in everything that would fit around it, but this turned out to be a dead end. I had over half of the clues solved and a fair idea of the first letters of most of them by now, so I turned my attention to places where there were across and down clues with a common first letter. The most obvious was at the top of column 2. Surely with all these As, one pair of 4/5 letters would fit. But no, I tried all possible combinations and all yielded something impossible. I then noticed the pair of words starting with S – SHED and SCREW. This gave me a location for the wild llama – HUANACO and led me to the location of IRAN. I tried SENIOR on row 4, but that lead to D??O?O??? for the 9 letter solution. the only possibilities were decolored and decolours, neither of which fitted the clue. So not SENIOR but GENIPS, leading me to DISPROOFS, a location for WEIGHT and TYCOONS and to ECURIES on row 2.
I was up and running now and between solving the last remaining clues by reverse engineering and sorting which were across and down I soon had a decent-looking grid. At the bottom left was PH??B?. I had just completed a crossword involving the moons of Saturn, so PHOEBE seemed a possibility, but there was no possibly candidate for the bottom left beginning with E, so I reviewed the last alphabetical clue and found that the alcoholic president was YELTSIN, and so it wasn’t Phoebe but Kim PHILBY, one of the Cambridge four/five soviet spies. This I do remember from my youth, especially as nine years later I was going up to the University in question. So we were looking for the “Cambridge Four” as a solution to the bit of rubric stating clues for four entries remain unseen – for thematic reasons. I rapidly found locations for BURGESS, MACLEAN and BLUNT and the grid fill was complete with no Googles – a first for quite a while. I remembered that there was a fifth spy, uncovered sometime later but could not remember his name.
So on to the next bit of rubric. I had to arrange the clues in their normal order and decipher the down message, then apply it to the across clues. I added clue numbers to my diagram to make this easier. I still had doubts about some of the extra letters generated by the down clues, but what I had yielded CLU??LE?DI??LETTERS, so after more reverse engineering we had to use the CLUES’ LEADING LETTERS to find another message. This was simpler and led to HIGHLIGHT FIFTH MAN. Bother! I had to resort to google to find CAIRNCROSS, the fifth man and located him on the NW to SE diagonal.
| Down Clue No. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 16 | 17 | 21 | 23 | 24 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| Extra Letter | C | L | U | E | S | L | E | A | D | I | N | G | L | E | T | T | E | R | S |
| Across Clue No. | 2 | 11 | 12 | 14 | 15 | 18 | 19 | 22 | 23 | 25 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 34 | 35 | |||
| 1st clue letter | H | I | G | H | L | G | H | T | F | I | F | T | H | M | A | N |
The title clearly refers to the Cambridge Five’s roles as spies or “spooks”. Great stuff Kruger, thank you.
| CLUES | ||||
| Clue: definition | Answer | Extra | Wordplay, [U]nused letter in down clues | |
| Single youth brought up the same (5) | ALONE | D | LA[D] (youth) reversed + ONE (the same) | |
| Welshman lying in rural suntrap (4) | ALUN | S | Hidden in rurAL [S]UNtrap | |
| Aromatic plant is feeding composer (5 | ANISE | R | IS in A[R]NE (composer) | |
| Foreign nation to identify heir apparent (6) | ANOINT | [NATION]* | ||
| Huge area of land like Iowa (4) | ASIA | AS (like) + IA (Iowa) | ||
| Jock’s maidservants inheriting fifth of estate’s property (6) | ASSETS | L | [L]ASSES (Scottish maidservants) round estaTe | |
| Gets used to contrary idiot occupying broken seat (7) | ATTUNES | NUT reversed in [SEAT]* | ||
| Conscious of being engaged in hostilities with Spain (5) | AWARE | T | A[T] WAR (engaged in hostilities) + E (Spain) | |
| Meal on stoep maybe stops anorexia arbitrarily returning (5) | BRAAI | Hidden reversed in anorexIA ARBitrarily | ||
| Scatty European contaminated biochemical catalyst (6) | CYTASE | T | [SCA[T]TY E]* | |
| North European college administrator twice moving base to the east (4) | DANE | DEAN (college administrator) with the E (base) moved two places right | ||
| They refute arguments as being lost without dwelling (9) | DISPROOFS | E | DISP(ut)[E]S (arguments) with UT (=as) removed round ROOF (dwelling) | |
| Illustrious scientist employed by El Salvador car teams (7) | ECURIES | CURIE (illustrious scientist) in ES (El Salvador) | ||
| An alien abruptly shocked poet’s lover (5) | ELIAN | A | Reference to Elia – Charles Lamb: [AN [A]LIE(n)]* | |
| Guillaume’s daughter shortened hair band (5) | FILLE | FILLET (hair band) shortened | ||
| Information is saving foremost of protected South American trees (6) | GENIPS | GEN (information) + IS round P (first letter of protected) | ||
| In drag, the heartless female’s odious (7) | HATEFUL | HAUL (drag) round T(h)E F(emale) | ||
| Wild llama, out of control, starts to attack anyone unwary nearby. Ouch! (7) | HUANACO | U | Starts to A(ttack) A(nyone) U(nwary) N(earby) + OUCH all anagrammed, so [AAUNO[U]CH]* | |
| Home of Persian nationalist pursuing republican militia (4) | IRAN | IRA (republican militia) + N(ationalist) | ||
| Tardy nurse inhibited from a very early age (6, 2 words) | LA TÈNE | LATE (tardy) round EN (nurse) | ||
| Guerilla bizarrely eats last bit of organ connected to tongue-like part (8) | LINGULAR | E | [GU[E]RILLA (orga)N]* | |
| Armchair’s protective covers – elegant but not new (8, 2 words) | LOVE SEAT | G | [G]LOVES (protective covers) + (n)EAT | |
| Cages ducks (4) | MEWS | S | [S]MEWS (ducks) | |
| Mixed in with stern German scientist (6) | NERNST | I | [[I]N STERN]* | |
| Floating ice on a cocktail initially found in drink (7) | OCEANIC | [ICE ON A C(ocktail)]* | ||
| Boer used it regularly cooking antelope (6) | OUREBI | E | [BO[E]R U E I]* (BOER + UsEd It regularly) | |
| Top man in public school’s no saint – he’s an IRA member! (5) | PROVO | PROVOST (top man in public school) minus ST | ||
| Openers of Sri Lanka team cheat (5) | SCREW | L | S(ri) + [L](anka) + CREW | |
| La Mancha’s gentleman welcomes independence first (6) | SENIOR | SENOR (Spanish gentleman) round I(ndependent) | ||
| Her deserted shack (4) | SHED | SHE (her) + D(eserted) | ||
| Dog’s tail, take note, caught by plough (9, 2 words) | ST. BERNARD | N | STERN (tail) round [N].B. (take note) + ARD (plough) | |
| Texan’s to completely destroy small quantity of whisky and beer (5) | TOTAL | E | TOT (small quantity of whisky) + AL[E] (beer) | |
| Harass not so young conservative magnates (7) | TYCOONS | [NOT SO Y C]* | ||
| Not having advanced in rank, retired colonels iron uniform samples – nothing’s overlooked (7) | UNRISEN | L | Hidden reversed in coloNE[L]S IR(o)N Uniform – ignore O. | |
| Importance of island preserving church (6) | WEIGHT | C | WIGHT (island) round [C]E | |
| Alcoholic president’s pigs kept in one in Fife (7) | YELTSIN | ELTS (pigs) in YIN (one Scottish) | ||
Lots of thanks to Kruger for a tough-but-fair challenge and Hihoba for the explication. I didn’t dare start jigsawing until I had the 9-letter down answers, but got them in the right places and (after some delay caused by the rash assumption that BRAAI went in at 20A) started happily filling the grid. I too was late getting YELTSIN and saw PHILBY as my first spook, leading immediately to BLUNT and after a bit of thought to the next two. Had forgotten CAIRNCROSS but found him through traditional inspection of the diagonals. All very enjoyable despite my usual nervousness about jigsawery-pokery with unclued extras.
Great puzzle I thought. I’m always apprehensive on trying to complete one of these jigsaw things, but managed through a little guess work (the 9 letter answers were very late falling here), and I suspect Kruger’s helpful grid and cluing designed to cater for solvers such as myself. 🙂 Spotting the spooks was of course a big help, and I did so pretty early on. Didn’t know the 5th man either, but again Kruger was very kind putting him in the first place we were likely to look. My message was somewhat mangled, but enough was present and correct to point to the second one and confirm the likely highlighting.
Poor old Yeltsin, destined to be defined as ‘alcoholic president’ (of course, Kruger needs the first ‘a’). An almost ideal Inquisitor, in that it was, for a long time, difficult – and then, suddenly, once you start entering (and Philby emerges from the shadows), rather easy. I’m grateful for a relatively simple final discovery. I suppose it would have been hard to generate the word ‘allegedly’?
Many thanks to Kruger and Hihoba.
I’m not much good at deciphering messages but as the grid started to fill , BURGESS was staring me in the face and with a title like SPOOKS (great series) it was unlikely to be about authors then i saw a space for his partner MACLEAN and with BLUNT and PHILBY I had a grid-full so i checked on google and there he was diagonally.
Took me back to almost childhood when the first two came to light and the other two were both covered by Alan Bennet plays
Many thanks Kruger and Hihoba
(probably preferred that Boris to the current one)
Jigsaws are now my least favourite thematic puzzles, but my memory of two excellent consecutive jigsaws from 18 months ago (nos. 1618/1619 by Nimrod and Kruger) spurred me to try this one. I enjoyed the cold-solving of the clues, and it was just unfortunate that the only three I could not solve in this way (ST BERNARD, DISPROOFS and SHED) included both the long words. Without those two, and bearing in mind also the handicap of not having the four unclued entries, I decided it wasn’t worth trying to put the pieces together.
I’m kicking myself for not getting DISPROOFS, which would have got me started in that location. Thanks to Kruger and Hihoba.
Thoroughly enjoyable
Excellent puzzle, Kruger, thank you. I almost sure this isn’t the first time that the Famous Five have come up in such puzzles, and for some reason Cairncross is harder to remember than the other four.
I love jigsaw puzzles and thoroughly enjoyed this. I think it is the third time I have come across the ‘Famous Five’ in thematic puzzle so this time I was prepared for CAIRNCROSS and could guess what the message was going to tell us. I clicked fairly early on in the grid fill too so the five names made the fill a relatively easy task.
Great puzzle! I didn’t get the 9 letter entries until the end but managed to figure out how to start the grid fill by using the 4-letter words instead. Thanks to all.
PeeDee @9
I was interested (but not surprised) that even without the 9-letter entries it was possible for you to start the jigsaw with the 4-letter words. I would have done that but was one short (SHED). Even then it might have been possible, but my desire to find the theme was outweighed by my dislike of doing word jigsaws without having all the pieces that I need (or think I need).
PeeDee / Alan @9 & 10
It was the same here – I didn’t get the 9s until late on and managed to succeed through a combination of the words I did have and – crucially – knowing which ones must go down or across.
Great puzzle, thanks Kruger.
Got the two 7-letter down answers and SHED across indicated HUANACO went on the left and UNRISEN on the right. After that it was a merry romp – most enjoyable. Thanks Kruger (and Hihoba for the blog – apart from the answer numbers, I can’t see any difference between the first two grids).
HG #12 It’s true – I was going to animate the three, but decided it wasn’t worth it. I suppose the numbered one on its own would have been sufficient – indeed perhaps only the final grid was really needed!
For ELIAN, “An alien abruptly shocked” should be [AN [A]LIE]* – the terminal n disappears due to “abruptly”. I can’t do the necessary red highlighting here. Thanks to Kruger & Hihoba.
Excellent puzzle – didn’t quite complete it, but had done enough to work out the theme. Thanks very much, Kruger!
Duly updated John Lowe #14, Thank you.