[If you’re attending York S&B please see comments 32&33] - here
Hello everyone. It’s always good to see a Chalicea puzzle.
The preamble to this one reads:
The slightly adapted statement at 1a, 42, six words expressing the speaker’s FEAR, was made at the time of an event at 23 (all unclued) in a film. An extra letter is produced by the wordplay of every down clue in addition to those required for the answers. These, in clue order, give an instruction regarding 27 cells. Chambers Dictionary (2016) and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations are recommended.
After an initial pass of across clues, I proceeded by trying to solve the downs in as close to clue order as possible, returning to crossing entries as needed. This meant that the instruction appeared nicely as I went along:
SHADE HIS RANK NAME AND FILM TITLE
I had spotted that PEARL HARBOR fit at 23a, but it was only after filling the whole grid that I came up with a plausible statement to fit the top and bottom rows:
WE HAVE AWAKENED A SLEEPING GIANT
This led me to Isoroku Yamamoto, the Japanese Admiral who oversaw the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. He is portrayed in several films, notably the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora! The quote is taken form the final scene of this film when he says, “I fear that all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” The first part of this line was taken and used in the 2001 film Pearl Harbor. The features to be shaded in the grid are all found in parallel diagonals:
ADMIRAL YAMAMOTO and TORA TORA TORA
Thanks Chalicea, giant of Crosswords!
| Clue No | ANSWER | Clue with definition underlined | |
| Explanation, with quoted indicators in italics and ANSWER letters in bold capitals | |||
| Across | |||
| 10a | AVES | Ancient greeting special birds (4) | |
| AVE (ancient greeting) + S (special) | |||
| 12a | ADMIRED | Had high opinion of Madrid when travelling around Spain (7) | |
| MADRID when anagrammed (travelling) around E (Spain) | |||
| 15a | THAWY | Temperature hot; always regularly inclined to melt (5) | |
| T (temperature) + H (hot) + alternate letters of (… regularly) AlWaYs | |||
| 16a | DUTCH GOLD | East London wife with good old substitute for costly decorative leaf (9, two words) | |
| DUTCH (East London wife) + G (good) + OLD | |||
| 19a | PENED | To write, journalist worked with heavy end of hammerhead (5) | |
| PEN (to write) + ED (journalist) | |||
| 20a | HERMA | Bust of the lady’s mother (5) | |
| HER (the lady’s) + MA (mother) | |||
| 21a | AMIDE | Amateur idea, mostly, for a compound (5) | |
| AM (amateur) + IDEa without the last letter (mostly) | |||
| 22a | TELL | Make known ancient mound (4) | |
| A double definition | |||
| 26a | TRACT | Leaflet’s skill dealing with others, overcoming resistance (5) | |
| TACT (skill dealing with others) around (overcoming) R (resistance) | |||
| 28a | TEAM | Mate playing for Arsenal, say (4) | |
| MATE anagrammed (playing) | |||
| 30a | OVUM | Egg, one very unsavoury mixture for starters (4) | |
| First letters of (… for starters) One Very Unsavoury Mixture | |||
| 31a | SOPS | To such an extent private secretary steeps in alcohol (4) | |
| SO (to such an extent) + PS (private secretary) | |||
| 33a | SOAR | Sounding touchy, rise to a height (4) | |
| A homophone of (sounding) SORE (touchy) | |||
| 34a | SOLACE | Source of comfort thus to intermingle (6) | |
| SO (thus) + LACE (to intermingle) | |||
| 37a | PORPHYRIA | Support rejected by hospital essentially analysing unlimited trial for metabolic disorder (9) | |
| PROP (support) reversed (rejected) + H (hospital) + the central letter of (essentially) analYsing + tRIAl without the outer letters (unlimited …) | |||
| 40a | FIAT | Order little Italian car (4) | |
| Two definitions | |||
| 41a | SANDWORT | Some copious and worthwhile herbaceous plant (8) | |
| Some copiouS AND WORThwhile | |||
| Down | |||
| 1d | WATCHETS | Samples including foremost of the old-fashioned angling flies (8) | S |
| [S]WATCHES (samples) containing (including) the first letter of (foremost of) The | |||
| 2d | EVHOE | Frenzied cry of ‘Heave ho!’ unfortunately lacking answer (5) | H |
| HE[a]VE [H]O anagrammed (unfortunately) without (lacking) A (answer) | |||
| 3d | ASWIM | Characters in Winchelsea saw impurities floating on water in the past (5) | A |
| Letters inside (characters in) WinchelseA S[A]W IMpurities | |||
| 4d | EDDA | Summed up revolutionary collection of poetry and stories (4) | D |
| ADDE[D] (summed up) reversed (revolutionary) | |||
| 5d | WIT | Ingenuity of Whistler from time to time (3) | E |
| WhIsTl[E]r, alternate letters (from time to time) | |||
| 6d | ARCED | Shrewd banks in England formed part of circle (5) | H |
| ARC[H] (shrewd) + outer letters of (banks in) EnglanD | |||
| 7d | EDGE TOOL | Cutting implement’s toil outside over, after bushy fence having its top clipped (8, two words) | I |
| TO[I]L around (outside) O (over) after hEDGE (bushy fence) without its first letter (having its top clipped) | |||
| 8d | NOONER | Start of naughty; preferably brief encounter during midday break (6) | S |
| The first letter (start) of Naughty + [S]OONER (preferably) | |||
| 9d | EALE | Authentic English that might have been evil for Shakespeare! (4) | R |
| [R]EAL (authentic) + E (English) | |||
| 11d | EAGRE | Base rage mounting about a bore (5) | A |
| E (base) and R[A]GE reversed (mounting) around (about) A | |||
| 13d | MUMM | Frenchmen holding their one originally medieval mime (4) | N |
| MM (Messieurs, Frenchmen) around (holding) U[N] (their one) + the first letter of (originally) Medieval | |||
| 14d | ADDLEMENT | Muddle-headedness of lousy damned Kelt (9) | K |
| An anagram of (lousy) DAMNED [K]ELT | |||
| 17d | DARTS | Set up beach game (5) | N |
| Reverse (set up) STRA[N]D (beach) | |||
| 18d | PIA | Capital of Samoa’s plant yielding arrowroot (3) | A |
| [A]PIA (capital of Samoa) | |||
| 19d | PEBA | Mozambique seaport’s armadillo (4) | M |
| PE[M]BA (Mozambique seaport) | |||
| 21d | ALTO | Beer for person with highest male voice (4) | E |
| AL[E] (beer) + TO (for) | |||
| 23d | PROOFS | Tests of fool’s paradise collapsing with ladies capriciously leaving (6) | A |
| FOO[l]’S P[A]R[adise] anagrammed (collapsing) with an anagram of (… capriciously) LADIES removed (leaving) | |||
| 24d | HEARS | Is informed husband gets money in return for work (5) | N |
| H (husband) + EAR[N]S (gets money in return for work) | |||
| 25d | LUCERN | Liberal Italian leader at heart spurning animal fodder (6) | D |
| L (Liberal) + [D]UCE (Italian leader) + the middle letters of (at heart) spuRNing | |||
| 27d | APRIL | Frail rogue holding power for month (5) | F |
| [F]RAIL anagrammed (rogue) containing (holding) P (power) | |||
| 29d | ARIAN | Melody at first idolised by an individual born under sign of Ram (5) | I |
| A[I]R (melody) + the first letter of (at first) Idolised + AN | |||
| 32d | SPAE | Springs up to divine in Callanish (4) | L |
| [L]EAPS (springs) in reverse (up) | |||
| 34d | SANG | Man caught in extremes of surging anthrax (4) | M |
| [M]AN inside (caught in) the outer letters (extremes) of SurginG | |||
| 35d | OLD | Informed elderly (3) | T |
| [T]OLD (informed) | |||
| 36d | ANOA | An oddly missing nomadic wild ox in Indonesia (4) | I |
| AN + even letters only of (oddly missing) nOmAd[I]c | |||
| 37d | PEA | Vegetable material dug from bogs and dried for fuel (3) | T |
| PEA[T] (material dug from bogs and dried for fuel) | |||
| 38d | YAP | Play up – blether (3) | L |
| P[L]AY in reverse (up) | |||
| 39d | TWI | Occasionally dimwitted, backward person speaking Ghanaian dialect (3) | E |
| Regular letters of (occasionally) dImWiTt[E]d reversed (backward) | |||
A delightful puzzle with an interesting theme that was fully resolved by reference to the ODQ.
I got to the theme after almost filling the bottom five rows of the grid – south of but not including PEARL HARBOR. A SLEEPING GIANT was easy to spot, and the ODQ led me to both the other unclued thematic entries and (later) to the hidden names. I managed to get nearly all the extra letters from the Down clues, with only two queries that were resolved when the message became clear.
Thanks to Chalicea and Kitty.
The usual elegant Chalicea exploitation of a theme. Spotting sleeping giant and then Pearl Harbor gave me my way in. The quote seemed familiar though of course I needed the net to find its source, and the film title. Thanks to Chalicea for the entertainment and to Kitty for the blog.
Many thanks, Kitty, for the blog.