The Bish half of DASH is on duty this week as the Numpty is off-grid, and he always enjoys a puzzle by Eclogue: but what will it be this time?
A densely-packed preamble is a tad worrying at first, but it proves to be clear and fair if concise: six thematic entries are unclued. The remainder are to be entered where they will fit with one letter pulled out to the perimeter, and of these 14 have an internal letter which has to be moved thematically before solving (“pulled outward” again – see below) to spell a thematic title.
Of necessity this is another of those puzzles that need a lot of cold solving before anything could be entered, complicated by the letters latent, though we noted that the only 8-letter light had to be an unclued entry starting, as became apparent, with A.
To divert for a moment, sorting out entries with the latent letters that will spell the perimeter words is quite a feat. I wonder if QXW is able to help a bit with that. Congratulations to Eclogue anyway for pulling it out off. Dare we try it too?
To make up for the cold solving, the clueing was generous and fair and we were able to write answers to most of the clues against them quite quickly. A few proved more tricky to parse for some reason though in each case crossing entries and alphabetisation made the answer clear and the penny dropped:
- “Daughter and son interrupting the meaning of loud show (7)” = DISPLAY from D and S in PLAY, with “loud” becoming “Ludo”
- “Female’s born by Benin badly off (5)” = NEEDY from NEE + DY [Benin used to be Dahomey…]
- “What one may sign briefly covers round Greek jar (7)” = STAMNOS from {SON(g) MATS}< with “sign” becoming “sing”
- “Critically examine stories in Italian hamlet (7)” = TESTANA from TEST ANA – an Italian hamlet. Who knew? The grid fill must have been very constrained just there …
I hope those examples also show how skilful Eclogue was with the moving letters. Vagans has used the gimmick twice and easy it was not.
By now the message from the moving letters was clear: THE OUTWARD URGE which we should have remembered was a collection of short stories by John Wyndham, but in truth perhaps never got beyond the Triffids. It wasn’t in the author’s usual style so at the publisher’s request it was billed as by John Wyndham and Lucas Parkes, which was a nice joke as his full name was JOHN WYNDHAM PARKES LUCAS BEYNON HARRIS. What a mouthful; but that’s what had to go in the perimeter with spaces left where it was met by the unclued entries ASTEROID MARS MOON SPACE STATION and VENUS – the titles of the short stories. Very neatly done again by our setting duo.
And that was it. A happy sort of puzzle even if Wyndham’s themes could have quite a dark edge, and very well implemented by Team Eclogue, who deserve a drink now perhaps from the “cache of wine found in cabinet”. Cheers!