Oh dear! This week we had a Hawk puzzle, his fourth Listener. Last time (no 4782, Life 2) involved cutting up the grid into two different sizes and gluing them together to identify Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in the film Twins, and I seem to remember that wasn’t straightforward. It appeared that no cutting was required here, but some sort of design had to go into the rather large top row.
Two sets of clues faced us. They were in normal order but positioned symmetrically. Since the grid was symmetrical about both horizontal and vertical axes, that could mean just about anything!
Set A clues had one or two extra letters inserted, the wordplay reflecting those additions. Set B clues had a misprint in the definition and they would describe one of the strings of extra letters. I think I got my head round all of that, and the first A clue Declines slips yielding each run for lead yielding EpBpBS [ERRS with PB for each R] left me feeling smug.
Of course, just to teach me, Hawk’s second A clue would be one of the last for me to solve Rounding yard, Becquerel pulled up at the big house in Kelso giving UPqBdY [(YD + BQ + UP<)<, the definition being a Scottish word for at the big house]. The next clue Lavish border didn’t jump out at me, but Mrs B soon led to FRIEZE [FREE being the lavish bit], to be entered with no lower-case letters.
Trying to solve the Set A clues seemed like a good idea, but even with EDDO, EDDY, DROOL and ID EST, plus all their extra letters, I was no nearer to fitting any in the grid. For a start I wasn’t too sure where the break was between acrosses and downs. Moving on to the Set B ones, Autistic female’s unrepentant nature returning to them in retirement pretty much shouted out artistic as the corrected misprint, but that was as far as I got. The second, on the other hand, Retiring male doctor merited further reward shouted out RE-EDIT [MERITED* – M] and it looked like the misprint was reward for reword.
Progress was slow, even after ARIOSI, BOUNDS, ENLARD, ESCUDO and PA’ANGA were jotted down. Again, the division between acrosses and downs caused delay, but it was when I got MEDFLY and tried that in column 1 with EpBpBS in row 1 that things started to speed up (speed not really being an appropriate word).
At some point, I start thinking that this was so tricky that it really should be in Magpie, but perseverance finally got me across the line and the endgame loomed into view.
Favourite clues were Tense, after second prince leaves to sniff at Balmoral chicken for PoOoOT [T after POO-POO – 2nd P] and Out on date, protest Dave’s clothing [DEMO + D(av)E] with its sneaky misprint Out of date.
Googling “mathematical frieze” sent me off to the Wiki page where it talked about “Hermann–Mauguin notation, Coxeter notation, Schönflies notation, orbifold notation”, nicknames created by British mathematician John Conway, he of the Game of Life. I was beginning to think that I was far from finished.
The article also mentioned translations, reflections and rotations, and the corrected misprints gave us Rotates yes, reflects no, so I knew I was on the right track. All those lower case b, c, d, o, p, q finally made sense. However, going down the path of thinking that each string of four letters could be rotated and reflected had me worried. Both pqbd in the top right and dpdp in the bottom right could be rotated and not reflected. Luckily, it didn’t take long to see that the phrase related to each letter in the string with translation to the next. Thus d rotated to p, p to d and d to p again.
Last step, and that sketch at the top of the grid needed completing. Taking those unchecked letters in the perimeter ER EK GE KY, which initially looked as though I’d made a mistake, needed just a bit of doodling to reveal GREEK KEY and the Greek frieze went in.
What a phenomenal puzzle, Hawk, and great use of the quirkiness of the English alphabet. And just because it was tough, didn’t require it to go into Magpie — I’m really glad the editors passed it (I don’t do Magpie).
Full clue analysis can be found at the Listener Crossword website.