… and Miles’ third Listener crossword. Welcome back! The last two involved us in mathematics. Are we going there again?
Well, the preamble was short and sweet and easy to follow, and the clues too weren’t too hard, with the three gimmicked pairs clearly indicated. We thought they were well constructed and accessible, with only the New Zealand novelist FRAME (15a) causing us to invoke our co-solver Wikipedia.
The challenge came in the endgame. Since a quick word-search didn’t throw up any candidate words hidden in the grid, it was a reasonable guess that block letters were going to be made by the shaded cells, but we couldn’t see a way of identifying these other than trying each column in turn. The correct column was the tenth… At least the words appeared straightforwardly at that point and with their corresponding extra words in the grid turned out to be:
- 11a METTLE > PITH
- 17a SPORT > JUDO
- 38a LOUT > CALF
So was there a short-cut to finding the correct column?) And why were these thee pairs of words chosen? And also why were the three six-letter answers gimmicked?
- 13a, 41d: SMILES > ISM + SEL
- 20a 4d: FRAMES > FRA + MES
- 35a, 40d: OTOOLE > TOO + OLE
We did wonder if the demands of the grid construction meant that rather a lot of three-letter words were included and combining them cut the clue-count and avoided some awkard clueing, and allowed the development of the “three” theme. But perhaps a setter’s blog or clever commentators will answer our questions and reveal more of what was going on.
Meanwhile thanks to Miles for an enjoyable and well-constructed puzzle and “cheers” for the SMILES he’s given us (which confirm his membership of the Oenophile Club of course).