The latest instalment from Triton in the ongoing saga of Andy Lemon is hopefully more of an adventure and less of a misadventure than some of his previous escapades, being his wedding to one Miss Charlotte Apple.
The preamble was a fairly long one.
You are invited to the wedding of Mr Andy Lemon and Miss Charlotte Apple, two weeks from today. However, you must establish the precise venue, the time of the ceremony, and the (appropriate) gift which you are asked to bring. Clues are listed in alphabetical order of their solutions. Each row of the main grid has been labelled with a random letter of the alphabet, as has each column; 12 clues show the labels of the row/column in which their grid entries begin, enabling you to populate the shaded cells.
There are 4 surplus solutions: in combination with pairs of Row/Column labels these will guide you to the answers that must be written under the grid. The first two (alphabetically) should be used as might be expected; the other two require differing and more creative interpretations. The five shaded cells not used in this process must be highlighted; read clockwise from the bottom, they identify the nearby establishment chosen to provide a sumptuous wedding breakfast.
This, combined with a grid and clues that were missing numbers, made for a challenge that at first glance looked a little daunting. As ever, though, the key to solving the Inquisitor is to take things one step at a time. The clues were normal, and actually very solver friendly, the only complication being that there were four that wouldn’t be entered into the grid.
On my first pass through the clues I had one of the two 9 letter length entries, a good number of the 8 length ones, and most of the 7. This gave enough to work out that SUNBATHER needed to be entered in the SE corner, and from there the grid fill was a fairly steady one, checking letters as ever being key to cracking some of the trickier ones.
We were told that each row and column had been assigned a random letter, which were given at the end of several of the clues whose first letter marked the appropriate location. I half expected them to form some sort of message, but they were as random looking as the preamble promised. The grid fill though seemed to be pretty solid, there being no unwanted clashes.
The surplus solutions, together with the row and column labels, would reveal the venue, time, and gift to be written under the grid.
Some evidently related to the thematic matter at hand, though not necessarily in the order I would recommend.
EMBRACES
FONDLING
KISSES
UNTOLD
With the first two leading in a more direct way to the answers than the latter two, where we were asked to be a bit more “creative”.
It was clear that the letter pairs in the first two were in effect coordinates, leading to individual letters.
| EM | Y |
| BR | O |
| AC | R |
| ES | K |
| FO | I |
| ND | I |
| LI | O |
| NG | O |
The former evidently what would turn out to be the first part of the venue, the latter the time – 11:00.
For the second pair, we were asked to do something a little different. KISSES looked likely to be referring to the small number of X‘s in the grid, their positions identified by row and column labels.
| X | JU |
| X | IC |
| X | ER |
For the last, UNTOLD, we were being directed to look from cells UN to LD, where reversed could be found MINSTER.
A JUICER is a pretty paltry gift given such a grand venue (YORK MINSTER), but I suppose it beats towels.
Last of all we were asked to highlight the outer cells that hadn’t been used as part of this process to identify the establishment where the “sumptuous” wedding breakfast would be held. As this turned out to be COSTA, which while serviceable will have been less than grand, perhaps Andy Lemon’s nuptials were turning into a misadventure after all.
In the finished grid below I’ve highlighted the elements that make up the various items to identify for information, but it was only COSTA that needed to be highlighted.
Wasn’t that good? More than good, actually. Smiles aplenty throughout, as befits the subject matter, and a puzzle overall that was just the right side of challenging. I suspect this will be one that will be on my end of year list.
| Clue | Answer | Wordplay |
|---|---|---|
| No idea about origin of dumpiness? It’s glandular (7) | ADENOID | An anagram of “No idea“ and the first letter of “dumpiness” |
| Jelly recipe next to stove (4) | AGAR | AGA (stove) + R (recipe) |
| Something carried by yachtsman, or a kagoul? (6) | ANORAK | Hidden in yachtsmAN OR A Kagoul |
| Save relative a large quantity of beer (6) | BARREL | BAR + REL (relative) |
| Hurt, initially bride-to-be is stopping to contemplate backing out (6; B/U) | BRUISE | B + RUE (“to contemplate backing out”) around IS |
| Large vessel roughly whisked lord back from honeymoon (7) | CALDRON | CA (roughly) + an anagram of “lord” and the last letter from “honeymoon“ |
| See offspring clutching ring and blushing (7) | CRIMSON | C (see – “the third letter of the alphabet”) and SON (offspring) about RIM (ring) |
| Geriatric chaplain’s beginning to stagger (5; C/N) | CROCK | C + ROCK (“stagger”) |
| Banish red-top following hacking (6) | DEPORT | An anagram of “red–top“ |
| One leaving oil etc when shifting refuse to back again (8; A/T) | DESELECT | DIESEL without the I + an anagram of “etc“ |
| Put off by splits, right? (6; F/C) | DEXTER | DETER around X (“by”) – “right” |
| Scorn ring and break up (7) | DISBAND | DIS + BAND |
| Roaming lakes, getting shot of a moose (4; I/S) | ELKS | An anagram of “lakes” without the A. Yes, the plural of moose is moose |
| Welcomes married couple in Ephesus on vacation (8) | EMBRACES | M + BRACE inside the E + S from “Ephesus” |
| Urgent need being to get grand for stone (8; E/D) | EXIGENCE | EXISTENCE with G (“grand”) replacing the ST (“stone”) |
| Describe former lover left in anguish (7; J/R) | EXPLAIN | EX P(L)AIN |
| Pack out-of-the-way church (5) | FARCE | FAR + CE – “to cram; to stuff, fill with stuffing” |
| Caressing fellow on date with Heather (8) | FONDLING | F (“Fellow”) ON D + LING (“Heather”) |
| Price rector’s charged to complete front of marriage licence (7) | FREEDOM | F(R)EE + DO (“complete”) + the M from “marriage” |
| Unsteady when giving daughter away? Disgusting! (4) | ICKY | dICKY without the D |
| Disreputable house with new wing where setter lives? (6) | KENNEL | KEN (“a disreputable house”) + N + EL (“wing”) |
| Breaking skies lead to sunburnt necks (6) | KISSES | An anagram of “skies” + the S from “sunburnt” |
| Cool to help bachelor in need (8) | LAID-BACK | AID + B (“bachelor”) all inside LACK (“need”) |
| Husband’s holding twisted ring with gold strands (7; O/I) | MAROONS | MAN‘S (“Husband’s”) around O + OR (“gold”), both reversed |
| Keepsake: article taken from intended filling me with love (7; U/O) | MEMENTO | MEaNT (“intended”) minus the A, inside ME + O (“love”) |
| You’ll get ban from barman having this rule (5) | NORMA | Removing the RMA from “barman” (no rma) would give “ban”. Norma is “the rule, a small southern constellation”. Neat |
| Giant dog removes sandwiches (4; N/G) | OGRE | Hidden in dOG REmoves |
| Boat, height obscuring length (7) | PINNACE | PINNAClE without the L (“length”). Pinnace seems to be a name for various types of boats. |
| Rolls I fed to obese person making cooked meal for breakfast? (8) | PORRIDGE | RR (“Rolls” Royce) + I all inside PODGE (“obese person”) |
| Groom about to take down trousers (5) | PREEN | RE (“about”) inside PEN (“take down”, or note down) |
| Simple rings less interesting when passed around ahead of time (9; S/M) | PREMATURE | PURE (“simple”) around TAMER (“less interested”) reversed |
| Essential element of overall air defence? About right (5) | RADAR | &Lit. The R from “oveRall” (“Essential element of”) + AD (“air defence”) + A (“about”) + R. The trickiest parsing in the puzzle I thought. |
| Groom can with bride stripped off (6) | RANCID | An anagram of CAN with the RID from “bRIDe”). Rancid, “off” |
| One responding to prod from minister framing answer (7) | REACTOR | RECTOR (“minister”) around A for “answer” |
| Film second hilarious performance (5; L/A) | SHOOT | S + HOOT |
| Drew attention to one drunk after another collaring priest (7) | SPOTLIT | SOT + LIT (two terms for “drunk”) around P for “priest” |
| I plan to bake fancy buns, heart shaped (9) | SUNBATHER | Two anagrams, of “buns” and “heart“, for someone planning to probably foolishly “bake” |
| Enormous bird with a lovely yielding rear (7) | TITANIC | TIT + A + NICe without the E |
| Aunt ignoring American veteran, not related (6) | UNTOLD | “Aunt” without the A for “American” + OLD (“veteran”). Untold, unrelated. I liked the misdirection in the definition. |
| Boots have these drugs (6) | UPPERS | Double definition |
A really fun puzzle set at a comfortable level, with lots of differing aspects to be considered. Took me a little while to sort out the KISSES & UNTOLD answers, but all was solved nicely in the end, affording me a complete finish, my first one for quite a while! From my point of view, this was one of the most engaging puzzles of 2022 so far.
As this was a jigsaw, I set out first to solve as many clues as I could, and preferably all of them. It took quite a long time over two sessions to do this, but it was a very enjoyable and rewarding task, as I managed to solve them all. My success owed most to the quality of the clues rather than their pitch – they were excellent. Only a quarter of them were what I would call easy. A quarter of them were tough, DESELECT being the toughest and last to solve.
It was then a straightforward task that to Fit the jigsaw pieces together and fill the shaded cells. The endgame, though, was difficult because the instructions were vague. I noted first that the two sets of shaded letters each had 12 different letters in them, so that they could be used as row/column coordinates. I did not understand the phrase ‘used as might be expected’, and it took me a while to spot that all the pairs of letters in the words EMBRACES and FONDLING were valid coordinates. When YORK and IIOO turned up, I was clearly on the right track. I didn’t see MINSTER in the grid, but I found it the hard way (eventually) using ‘UN to LD’ (UNTOLD). The best bit, which came quite quickly (the hint ‘differing’ possibly having helped), was using the reverse process (from grid letters to coordinates) to make JUICER from the three KISSES (X’s). An ideal gift (!). Just as COSTA was the ideal ‘nearby establishment’ (?).
Thanks to Triton for the admirable crossword jigsaw, the highly original thematic design and (what was for me) the first resolvable Andy Lemon theme (after two lemons!). And thanks to Jon_S for a thorough and interesting blog.
Thanks Triton for an excellent puzzle. It was a real delight from beginning to end. Being relatively new to The Inquisitor I wasn’t aware of earlier Andy Lemon adventures.
The pattern of 9 letter and 5 letter answers gave a good way into the jigsaw, and in the endgame YORK and IIOO fell out pretty quickly. KISSES followed, but UNTOLD took me ages, and I feared a DNF. York Minster seemed a likely venue and after taking Costa from the perimeter it still took ages for the UN to LD penny to drop. Not a problem with the puzzle, but just my being particularly dim on this occasion. An excellent balance between the grid fill and the endgame difficulty.
Thanks again Triton and also Jon_S for the blog.
Great stuff, a clear puzzle of the year contender for me. I remember feeling let down by the endgame of the last Andy Lemon puzzle but no such issues here, this was indeed a ‘delight’. And nice of Andy to invite solvers to the wedding, I guess that’s the least he could do after we helped him escape from his kidnap ordeal.
A teeny pedantic point: there was nothing random about the placing of the row/column letters.
Thanks Triton and all good wishes to the happy couple.
I was feeling delicate on the Saturday morning and when I first looked at the preamble it was enough to send me straight back to bed. But once I’d recovered, I found it hit the Goldilocks spot for an Inquisitor…the first few alphabetical clues resolved themselves quickly and the blind solving proved just about sufficient to make a stab at piecing the jigsaw together, etc.
And as the puzzle specified the date of the wedding is this coming Saturday, let me offer my best wishes to the couple, as well as the more customary thanks to setter and blogger. Cheers!
Really enjoyed the grid-fill, correctly distributed the random (or non-random) letters, but I did not, last week, possess the right kind of brain to understand we were being asked to break down ’embraces’ and ‘fondling’ into pairs of letters and use those letters as co-ordinates. Very impressed with those who cracked it.
Thanks to Triton and Jon_S
Same as Neil at #5.
Indeed very enjoyable, helped of course by figuring out the endgame in a reasonably swift manner – although I’d have been happy even if I hadn’t eventually clocked UNTOLD.
I guess the endgame instructions could have been clearer (“use the surplus words as grid references”) but then some would have argued that to be too easy – a fine line to tread every week.
My only slight disappointment was that the remaining letters didn’t spell BETTYS but that would have needed another letter!
Just popping in to add my tuppence worth of praise for this one, plus thanks to Triton and Jon_S. Despite solving most of the clues I found the jigsaw work mysteriously intimidating and didn’t get to work on it for about a week. Glad I did, though….
We loved this puzzle- it took a couple of days of brooding to get the various decoding methods, but thought the preamble was at just the correct level of incomprehensibility. Great fun!
Finished the grid, then quickly gave up on the basis that the instructions were vague and I frankly wasn’t that engaged by the wedding theme.
I now feel somewhat stupid that I didn’t realise what to do with EMBRACES or FONDLING, but I doubt that I would have completed the other steps, so on balance happy that I didn’t waste time on it.
Quite good fun – creeps in my top 5 of the year so far.