There have been some stunning Listener crosswords this year and the competition for the Ascot Gold Cup will be fierce.
Pointer, with this delightful puzzle, his eighth for the Listener series, will surely be joining the fray.
The preamble promised us at least six mounts and we were also to remove six words from clues to enable solving. Ultimately we would be cutting the grid into three pieces and repositioning 20 cells so that the two historic people in column 7 would each be astride a mount.
What a pleasure it is, for a weaker solver (like the Numpty half of the Dash team) when the setter adheres to Chambers and a clue like ‘Utensil stirred in colours from yolk (7)’, giving LUTEINS, is immediately confirmed by the dictionary definition. Pointer gave us that pleasure with fair and transparent clues. Solving was speedy and fun once we had a skeleton grid with, for example, Gs of GALOP and GESTAPOS or the Ls of LUTEINS and LEAD-UP in place and showing us how to split this series of mostly double clues into their rows and columns.
Donkeys begin to appear fairly smartly with BURRO appearing in the BURROW of row 1, MODESTINE on Row 13, CUDDIE and Orwell’s BENJAMIN emerging (I was looking across at his reclusive house on the Isle of Jura a couple of weeks ago with such a storm blowing that we could barely stand, no wonder Benjamin is so dour). EEYORE, equally dour, is a family favourite but he, like CUDDIE was reversed – a hint that we were rediscovering SAM LOYD’s Donkey Puzzle? We were even told that in ‘Loyd eg. rising up is turned off hot day (7)’ PU = rising up, ZZLER = SIZZLER minus IS turned giving us our PUZZLER. When we went to co-solver, Wiki, for help, we learned what a fortune BARNUM (the other historic person in Column 7) had made out of the PUZZLE so there was donkey number six. And did you spot the seventh donkey? MAUD is down at the bottom left, kicking her heels up truculently in a diagonal.
Of course, looking for words to extract from clues (more donkeys, of course: vote, work, pump, jacket, engine, Derby) we had spotted the BOOZE, ‘South African mostly gaining weight in bust (5)’ BOE(r) around OZ, and the POMEROY ‘Bordeaux lacks finish with unknown vintage fruit (7)’ so Pointer retains his membership of the Listener oenophile elite. Cheers, Pointer!
Six donkeys but now the head-scratching. How were we to put SAM LOYD and BARNUM each onto one of those six? – It had to be EEYORE and the PUZZLE – but what a stunning endgame!
The three pieces we cut the puzzle into are 1: the 20 cells that rotate (so that we have to turn our grid upside down to see SAM LOYD astride EEYORE with BARNUM opposite him, astride the PUZZLE) 2: the middle 16 cells surrounded by those 20 cells that are rotated 90 degrees, and 3: the rest of the grid. It’s spectacular how Pointer gets the Z of PUZZLE to be the N of BARNUM and EEYORE’s O to be SAM LOYD’s O. What a lovely compilation. Thank you Pointer.