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A warm welcome to Tack. (That may of course get warmer or cooler as the puzzle progresses.)
Preamble: Solutions are to be entered jigsaw fashion, wherever they will go. A word of at least three letters must be removed from clues before solving. Omitted words hint at a series of successful plays first performed in the theatre in 1983, forming a pattern which the clue order must follow. Otherwise, clues are ordered alphabetically by their solutions.
The series is known by three words; the first word appears as many times in the grid as each of two individuals has performed it at the venue. Changing two letters in the filled grid will reveal their surnames which solvers must highlight, together with a viable choice of the three-word series name (27 cells in total).
So, clues are ordered alphabetically by their solutions except where they aren’t – very helpful.
When it comes to a jigsaw, I thought that the clues (to be solved cold) would be easier than I found them – at least to start with. Still, there were only two 9-letter answers, and GOLDFINCH was easy, as were three of the four 4-letter answers: ECHO, JIVE & NODS. It looked like GOLDFINCH in column 3 with NODS intersecting in row 4 was a fair bet, supported by LOVELIHEAD across row 3 and ANECDOTIST down column 1.
As more answers were slotted in here & there it seemed like the clue ordering was loosely alphabetical but with lots of tweaks along the way, too many for me to discern any pattern, so that would have to wait. There were quite a number of uses of some device or other to omit first and last letters in the wordplay – ‘bossy girl discovered’ for (m)ADA(m), ‘endless trip’ for (h)OLIDA(y), ‘unlimited mushrooms’ for (p)ORCIN(i), and finally ‘stripping game’ for (l)ACROSS(e) – which I always find difficult, and even harder are Spoonerisms: I challenge anyone to solve ASYNARTETE cold.
OK. Grid filled, time for a break, pick it up tomorrow.
I thought about the theatre and plays from the 1980’s, trilogies maybe, or Play for Today on the BBC, but that didn’t really fit and was the wrong decade anyway. So … pause, take a breath, and don’t become blinkered. I puzzled over the endgame for a little while longer and decided to scan the grid. I quickly spotted FOUR in column 2 and SEVEN in the penultimate column, then ONE near the middle of the fourth row – that was all I needed to set me on my way. O’SULLIVAN and HENDRY followed quite swiftly, then I went for a walk before lunch, still thinking about snooker and the pattern in the clue order.
I hadn’t been out long, and – because clue 2 was the last one I’d sorted out (the wordplay for ACROSS) – Maria was on my mind, and that is associated with black; and that clue is preceded by one where setter is redundant, red of course. And there we have it: red black red black red black and so on, finishing with the “colours” yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, and finally the black, to achieve the maximum break of 147.
I think the trio of occurences of ONE in the grid was an unnecessary flourish, but no doubt kenmac remembers all those matches at the Crucible Theatre over the decades. Thanks, Tack: a deftly worded preamble (a series of plays … performed … theatre) successfully misdirected me for some time after I had filled the grid – but not too long …
| Clue | Answer | Wordplay | |
| ● | Cold answer can faze [setter] at first (5) | ALOOF | A(nswer) LOO (can, lavatory) F(aze) |
| ● | Stripping game [Maria] brings over (6) | ACROSS | (l)ACROSS(e) (game) |
| ● | Scottie and [Ant] manipulated raconteur (10) | ANECDOTIST | [SCOTTIE AND]* |
| ● | Navy regularly has [Friday] rum, bossy girl discovered (6) | ARMADA | (h)A(s) R(u)M (m)ADA(m) (bossy girl) |
| ● | Guard perhaps beat hill [mist] (6) | CAPTOR | CAP (beat) TOR (hill) |
| ● | Stanza, a [country] metalworker, compiled crosswords for Spooner (10) | ASYNARTETE | Spoonerism: A TINNER (metalworker) SET (compiled crosswords) |
| ● | Returning home, [admiral] suffers somewhat with leak (6) | EFFUSE | (hom)E SUFFE(rs) rev. |
| ● | [Spot] wound up Conservative painting senior journalist (6) | COILED | C(onservative) OIL (painting) ED (senior journalist) |
| ● | Seven edgy fences smoothed [carpet] (6) | EVENED | (s)EVEN ED(gy) |
| ● | Scottish cheese [pudding] cut by Dutch nationalist (6) | DUNLOP | LOP (cut) after DU(tch) N(ationalist) |
| ● | Brightly shone [light] aided Rita arresting Republican crook (10) | IRRADIATED | [AIDED RITA]* around R(epublican) |
| ● | Repeat [tie] with Hearts dividing English county (4) | ECHO | H(earts) in E(nglish) CO(unty) |
| ● | First person in France to introduce four [square] dance (4) | JIVE | JE (first person, I, Fr) around IV (four) |
| ● | [Cat] competition opening after the end of June (5) | EVENT | VENT (opening) after (Jun)E |
| ● | He’ll [tape] a video about rare beauty (10) | LOVELIHEAD | [HE’LL … A VIDEO]* |
| ● | [Watch] grand elderly fellow measure pecker (9) | GOLDFINCH | G(rand) OLD (elderly) F(ellow) INCH (measure) |
| ● | City meet dinked [cross] before halfway leading to Haaland’s second (6) | MEDINA | ME(et) DIN(ked) (H)A(aland) |
| ● | Confused [swan]: it screamed “quack” once (10) | MEDICASTER | [IT SCREAMED]* |
| ● | Negative [Leicester] detective signals agreement (4) | NODS | NO (negative) DS (detective) |
| ● | New setter has to accommodate outsize [bear] once a month in France (6) | NIVÔSE | N(ew) I’VE (setter has) around OS (outsize) |
| ● | Two priests on mountain [route] in Greece (6) | PELION | P(riest) ELI (priest) ON |
| ● | Family flying [economy] over Rhode Island on endless trip East (9) | ORIOLIDAE | O(ver) RI (Rhode Island) (h)OLIDA(y) (trip) E(ast) |
| ● | Stop former lover leaving [giant] bomb (7) | PLOSIVE | EXPLOSIVE (bomb) ¬ EX (former lover) |
| ● | Bottom [box] of The i Paper, as it were, displays poisonous plants (7) | OURARIS | OUR (of The i Paper, as it were) ARIS (bottom, arse, Cockney sl) |
| ● | Revolutionary dull sulphur [brick] that helps store nuclear waste (6) | SYNROC | CORNY< (dull) S(ulphur) |
| ● | [Mark] slates heartless heathens (4) | PANS | PA(ga)NS (heathens) |
| ● | Limitation of inheritance in law: track the old [devils] (6) | TAILYE | TAIL (track) YE (the, old) |
| ● | Flash unknown artist allowed [coffee] outside (6) | RAYLET | Y (unknown) in RA (artist) LET (allowed) |
| ● | Charm [delicious] maiden after TV special (6) | TELESM | M(aiden) after TELE (TV) S(pecial) |
| ● | Enthralled by [Russian] aeroplane I saw over Italian city (5) | SIENA | (aeropl)ANE I S(aw) all< |
| ● | I will leave spoilt tandoori [chicken] giving off smell (7) | ODORANT | [TANDOORI]* ¬ I |
| ● | Compound has unlimited mushrooms, [marijuana] and ecstasy (6) | ORCINE | (p)ORCIN(i) (mushrooms) E(cstasy) |
| ● | A company in Scottish mountain society fires [cook] (7) | BEACONS | A CO(mpany) in BENS (Scottish mountain) S(ociety) |
| ● | Fruit cake changed [unhappy] atmosphere at last (5) | ACKEE | [CAKE]* (atmospher)E |
| ● | Noughties novel [rose] sometime later (6, two words) | ONE DAY | double definition {ref. David Nicholls, 2009} |
| ● | Coaches with a [dismal] German girl band run off (10) | WAGONETTES | W(ith) A G(erman) RONETTES (girl band) ¬ R(un) |
I used to have mixed experiences of jigsaw crosswords, but they gave me valuable practice in cold-solving and I look forward to them now. In this one, the fact that the clues were not in alphabetical order of their solutions made them somewhat more challenging – and time-consuming – to solve, but the rewards I had from all that hard work were a completed grid and the enjoyment of a very good set of clues, all of which I managed to parse successfully. I noted, by the way, that this setter likes to use what I might call ‘indirect subtraction’ in wordplay, as in the clue to ARMADA plus six other instances.
I had no luck with the endgame. I saw the word ONE in four places in the grid, but I did not fully understand the instructions, and the clues ‘1983’ and ‘series of plays’ were not enough. The hints, all 36 of them, were of no use at all! Having seen the theme explained above, I can safely say I would never have got it.
Thanks to Tack anyway for a very well-clued puzzle, and to HG for the excellent blog.
I really enjoyed this puzzle, notwithstanding the fact that the title and the preamble suggested snooker to me before I even started….
The clues were pitched at the right level for the fact that it was not a straightforward jigsaw. The endgame was logical and clear (to me anyway) and my mind-reading skills were not called upon
I filled in the grid but no amount of prompting or nudging with increasingly sharp elbows from #2 bingy was able to open my eyes to the staring-you-in-the-face-once-you’re-told-what-it-is theme.
Wow! That took some sorting out but in the end proved to be very rewarding.
We used to go up to Sheffield to watch the Championships but we spent too long looking at plays performed in 1983. Bert spotted Hendry so we then searched for famous actors with that name. We discounted the Crucible connection as the Championships moved there before 1983. The penny finally dropped when we spotted O’Sullivan and ONE FOUR SEVEN. Unfortunately despite being at the Championships for at least 10 sessions, we never witnessed a 147 although we were there in the early hours of the morning when Dennis Taylor got through to the final.
However, we were so puzzled by the seemingly arbitrary list of words. Such a satisfied sigh and smile when the balls fell into place.
Thanks Tack – just what an IQ should be. Thanks HolyGhost for the blog.
I entered Asynartete entirely from the crossing letters and couldn’t parse it until it was explained to me. However reading the entry in Chambers I see that the pronunciation recommended for the word rhymes with seat rather than set, which rather spoils the Spoonerism.
Thanks nonetheless to Tack for a challenging crossword and to HG for the blog.
A lovely puzzle! But I was puzzled by “a viable choice” — does it mean something? Or will any old ONE do? (Also a superfluous diagonal ONE snuck in uninvited!)
That was fun when the penny finally dropped. I seemed to have to do a lot of (slow) cold solving before filling in the grid. The lack of strict alphabetical order of answers didn’t help, but it did lead to some nice surface readings such as the tandoori chicken clue for ODORANT, and well done Tack for finding so many words that could be associated with the colours. Did it matter which location of ONE was highlighted? I went for row 1 for no good reason.
Thanks to Tack for the puzzle and to HolyGhost for the blog.
I also spent a long time trying to decide which of the ones to highlight. If you take the I of ‘plosive’ and the V of ‘lovelihead’, it looks a little bit like an arrow (or cue) pointing at the one highlighted above (and as it uses a V and an I, arguably could be considered ‘vi’-able). Bit of a stretch, but it’s the only thing I could find.
@6@7@8 I assumed that by “viable choice” the setter simply meant that we could choose any of the “Ones” available – although perhaps not the vertical one as that would look more like “Four One Seven”. For what it’s worth I chose the top one as it was out of the way of Ronnie O’Sullivan.
A great endgame but a very tough solve I thought, especially given the seemingly random order. (Like others, I only discovered the logic after solving almost all the clues so it wasn’t very helpful.) And ASYNARTETE will indeed stick in my memory for a while.
Thank you nonetheless to TACK and of course HG – perhaps make it 10% easier next time?
I thoroughly enjoyed this although it took an embarrassingly long time for the penny to drop, I needed a full grid and some staring (and, to be perfectly honest, a touch of ‘virtual phone a friend’) before I realised just how cleverly misdirecting the preamble had been… then more staring at the extra words until a broad grin formed on my face. It’s one of those wacky ideas that I wish I’d thought of myself 😁
FWIW my shading of the ONE was as per the blog, as this has the three words/numbers in reading order.
Big thanks to Tack and HG.
Solved clues, fitted in clues, worked out red/black, but got no further (distracted by believing in the dish of “red” chicken and lumps of “black” marijuana, plus an obviously red rose and a black day being an unhappy one). I simply looked for things that were red and black, and found out lots about Stendhal and roulette. Infuriating because I do remember the first 147 break at rhe Crucible (Cliff Thorburn), and I knew the plays were not going to be drama, and as others have said, it’s all obvious when you think of it. I thought the clues were perfectly fair, and it is a clever and topical puzzle. Tack was simply too clever for me, but many thanks to HolyGhost for the blog.
A good challenge this, although it took a while for the first ball to drop. In the meantime I had spotted Sullivan and went looking in vain for Gilbert. Then saw O’Sullivan and found that Richard O’Sullivan had played in Aladdin in the West End in 1983 – this also proved to be a wild goose chase. Finally, just as I was feeling well snookered, I realised that I had been staring at O’Sullivan and Hendry. That was the cue I needed to clear the table. Thanks to Tack for the topical and innovative puzzle and HG for doing the hard yards. 147/147 this week!