There’s a murmur of delight when the setter name Kea appears. That is followed by a mutter about cartes blanches, but, of course, there will be a reason for this as his clues are given in normal order, with a 180-degree symmetrical grid, with word lengths – no tricksy gimmicks – and there will simply be six initially blank cells.
Solving is speedy with generous and perfectly fair clues to some familiar crossword answers, ETUI, DOGE, FOHN, GIO, LANAI, EORL, TSUBA, PROUST, STOMA (we do have a setter’s/solvers vocabulary of our own, don’t we!) and Kea kindly includes some of those in hiddens or anagrams or alternate letter clues but then there are the more unusual CERCOPITHECID, GUBERNACULA, DIGYNIA, PAUE and MISDIGHT, all still very clearly clued by the master.
A smile for his ‘In Belarus, everybody’s courageous (6)’ (ALLS in BY). Of course he retains his oenophile membership. ‘Red’ appears at the start, ‘Seeing red relish as spread (8)’ and ‘relish as’ anagrams to HAIRLESS which Chambers tells us is slang for ‘very angry’. The grapes appear towards the other end of the clues ‘Grape over acid-covered tab that’s torn away (8)’ with UVA turning up (from UVA< + LSD round E which delayed this week’s lead blogger for a moment who we can assure you was only interested in the first intoxicant). “Cheers, Kea!”
Six empty cells duly appeared and we surrounded them with bars and head-scratched. SHEBA LOVES GOLD sent the more highbrow member of the Dash team off down a rabbit-hole but the hint was in those symmetrically unchecked cells that told us JOHN, GEORGE, PAUL and RINGO. Student union days come back to mind: SHE LOVES YOU played over and over again but 66 bars? Of course REFRAIN was our big hint. ‘Solvers must refrain from drawing any but the 66 significant bars.’ Yeah, yeah, yeah!
A masterclass in how elegance and superb construction can trump fiddly gimmicks. So we’ll leave the blog at that too.
Hmmm…interesting, but how are those particular bars ‘significant’? I took it to be an almost blank grid, with just ‘SHE LOVES YOU’ filled in (although the only sheet music I could find for the song seemed to be 65 bars, rather than 66.)
I guess I’ll find out tomorrow!…
This was a quality puzzle, like other puzzles by this setter that I remember (including at least one other carte blanche). It was satisfying to complete the grid, at which point I did not see and could not guess the theme. Eventually, it was seeing the possibility of JOHN and PAUL in symmetrically opposite places in the grid that triggered thoughts of the Beatles, and it was left only for me to appreciate how well the other thematic items were arranged in the grid. A very neat thematic design and execution.
Thanks to Kea and Chalicea.