A new setter this week and I think he is vying for the annual MVP award — Medal for the Vaguest Preamble! [There’s no such thing. Ed.]
For a start, there were five extra words in clues, two of which were an anagram for two words in the endgame. There would also be eight letter changes but only six of them would be determined from the remaining three extra words. Then a word somewhere in the grid would need replacing and an instruction followed from the misprints in the across clues. Oh… and did I mention it was a carte blanche?!
On with the clues then. 1ac Attorney-general allowed to tag women through DMs, say (5) seemed like a straightforward clue from just the first four words to AGLET [AG + LET], except there was a misprint somewhere, probably DMs? (In fact it would turn out to be woven for women with DMs referring to Doc Martins — I think.) Next came 7ac Stationery thus absorbs some ink? (6) where the misprint was almost certainly stationery for stationary, so STATIC [TAT in SIC] got slotted in after only a few seconds. Next came 12ac Part of camera, to one director, propped for shooting (8) where the misprint was likely propped for prepped but the marvellous surface reading delayed me from seeing that it was a simple hidden clue [(came)RA TO ONE D(irector)].
Clues came together reasonably quickly after that, with some nice pink devices (link devices for SCSI), Lords from Riga (words from Riga — LETTISH) and fake rum (fake rom for DIDICOI). There was also that Broody bachelor getting connected (8) with bloody the misprint for BLINKING [B + LINKING]. Favourite clue (for obvious reasons) was 29ac Finishes off the ouzo, gin and Pernod (3) for EON [(th)E (ouz)O (gi)N] with Pernod the misprint for period. I also liked the bizarre 1dn When nuts sign as subs they fatally suck (12, two words) for ASSASSIN BUGS [AS + (SIGN AS SUBS)*].
The grid was complete in just under three hours, the carte blanchiness not being too much of a problem. However, the misprints in the acrosses spelt out another vague instruction: Vacate all but thirty-two cells! First glance at the grid had RATOONED for RATIONED and DODGERY for DODDERY jumping out at me, as well as INVENTION appearing across the middle if EON changed to ION.
But I was getting ahead of myself. The extra words in the down clues were gag, alternate, column, central and pride, and the middle three pointed me in the direction of UNWEPT and ENTOIL down the middle of the grid. A bit of doodling to create new words across and I soon got INGEST and INFOAL with AGELESS, ION, LEFTISH and BLANKING appearing.
Now I’m guessing that not everyone found the next step easy, but having been in the IT industry for most of my working life, IBM manuals with pages saying just “This page intentionally left blank” was a common sight. Taking the two remaining extra words, gag and pride, soon told me to change PAGE to GRID and I made sure to leave IS in as well to bring the letter count up to 32.
Great stuff. Thanks, Tuds.