This is Seps’s fourth Listener since he first joined us three years ago. The first three had musical and poetic connections. But what’s in store this time?
The preamble asked us to alter five answers thematically before entry, but coyly didn’t tell us how or where. A word also needed to be altered in six other clues (keep awake on the back row!) using a variation on the theme. Music again? Perhaps so. Perhaps not. And all the other clues had an extra letter in the wordplay that would thankfully spell out theme and hint at the variation. And oh yes, five cells when highlighted in a shape related to a forename (presumably the initial letter) would show the theme’s creator (presumably the surname). Carl Czerny? Franz Kafka? … No, don’t be silly, the list is probably too long to chase, so off to the clues…
… which were a fine set, and no quibbles from us. The grid fill went quite quickly in fact, with the five thematic entries slowing things down a bit of course. They turned out to be
- 3a. TONIGHT appearing in the grid as T?REENIGHT
- 29a. CREATE appearing in the grid as ?R?NINE
- 33a. BEFORE appearing in the grid as BE?IVE
- 1d. WONDERFUL appearing in the grid as ?WODERFUL, and
- 16d. TENNIS appearring in the grid as E?E?ENNIS
Well, it didn’t take a degree in higher mathematics to see that TO was now THREE, ATE NINE, FORE FIVE, TWO THREE and TEN ELEVEN: all adding one once the homophones were resolved.
But why?
It was time to check out the extra letters from the wordplay and these proved (once the usual gaps were filled in) to spell out INFLATIONARY LANGUAGE and ROMAN.
The ROMAN made sense at last of the thematic alterations to clue words, where I seemed to be being added – but deleted in one isnstance instead. Had we got muddled? What was actually happening was that in Roman Numerals C became CI, V VI, IV V, L LI, M MI and V VI. Clever!
But what about INFLATIONARY LANGUAGE. We resorted to our co-solver Google and discovered that it was a party trick of comedian (and pianist – the music was there after all) Victor Borge (1917-2000: The Clown Prince of Denmark): “Twice upon a time” and so on. All the five examples used were his, we think.
Wot fun, as Molesworth would have said. We enjoyed it a lot and look fiveward to some more before three long.
PS We’re not sure whether sobriety or inebriation is the better springboard for this sort of verbal pyrotechnics, but note that Seps “read up part of the agenda during red-eye” so are delighted to reconfirm his membership of the Oenophiles Club.
PPS Remember that as always the full parsing of the clues is available at listenercrossword.com.
I’ve often noticed that in these blogs you complete the gridfill before looking at the message. Is that really how you solve these?
For me, I needed the message to work out the theme, then that helped me solve the thematic clues and entries.
I think it’s one reason I prefer the listener to normal crosswords. Messages, gimmicks, themes, etc provide extra information that help me over the line. In a normal crossword, if I’m stuck on a clue, then I’m stuck!
In reality of course you’re absolutely right and I (Vagans) jump between them, and sometimes push to get the message and then use that not only for the endgame but to crack recalcitrant clues. But I would find it hard to put that into the sort of length of blog that isn’t TLDR, so I take the economical approach. I’ll try and give an example in a future blog.
Thanks for clarifying!
I’m generally in awe of your solving skills (cold solving is the weakest part of my crossword game) – last year was tough, with quite a few I couldn’t finish. But it’s nice to know the gap is marginally smaller than I perhaps thought 😉