Inquisitor 1247: Cause and Effect by Pointer

Preamble: The unclued across entries are five names that may be seen on a map; their relative locations are represented approximately by their shaded initial letters. The region on the map, slightly extended beyond the bounds of the grid, is the setting for a novel whose title comprises two clued answers. With all answers entered, three letters in each of the 2nd and 12th rows must be altered to reveal two words, each occupying 6 contiguous cells; these 12 cells must be highlighted. The two words describe a cause and effect alluded to in the novel. Also, a word appears in the final grid that describes the five unclued entries – this must be overwritten in an appropriate colour. In the story, some of this may well have contributed to the cause, but here some of it contributes to the effect. All entries in the final grid are real words.

Wow! What a long preamble, hopefully it will begin to make sense as the clues are beaten into submission.

I don’t recall seeing any puzzles from Pointer but I’m sure Holy Ghost will put me right.

The unclued entries prove a little troublesome as they’re clearly not in Chambers. My initial breakthrough came when OneLook suggested BROUILLY. Then a trip to Wikipedia revealed that Brouilly is part of the Rhone region of France. A few blind alleys later, I relaised that we were looking for crus within the Beaujolais region of France: FLEURIE, CHIROUBLES, MORGON, RÉGNIÉ and BROUILLY.

With most of the grid filled I set about looking for the novel. I struck lucky as I decided to start looking in the rows first and for some reason I started with the bottom row. CLOCHEMERLE rang a little bell inside my head and, sure enough, another trip to Wikipedia revealed that Clochmerle is a novel by Gabriel Chevallier about plans to install a new urinal in the village square. At this point I just about dried up as there is very little information about Clochemerle on the internet and I’ve never read it, neither did I see the 1972 British TV series (though that’s probably where the little bell came in) and I couldn’t make any word changes work in the 2nd and 12th rows. The only thing I could see was FRIDAY could become URINAL if I changed the 1st, 4th and 6th letters but since that left non-words, it clearly wasn’t right.

I was on the verge of giving up when I decided to re-read the preamble for the thousandth time and this time, something clicked. The phraseology (6 contiguous cells) made me realise that the words were probably over more than one row. Since we had to change 3 letters then it was likely that it would be 3 on one row and 3 on the row above or below.) Woo-hoo! There we have it CAPED (11a) becomes CANAL, making UNBLOWN, ALAND and ILEAL (6d, 12, 7d) giving us URINAL (the CAUSE) in h2, i2, j2, h3, i3, j3; and FRIDAYS (34a) becomes MAYDAYS, making SWARM, STOAE and APPUY (22d, 27d, 24d) giving us MAYHEM (the EFFECT) in g12, h12, i12, g13, h13, i13.

So, on to the last piece of the puzzle. My first thought was Beaujolais but since there are no J’s in the grid, that thought quickly disappeared. My next thought was RHONE but the 4 H’s didn’t come to anything. Visit 1001 to the preamble – some of it contributes to the effect. Got it! It’s the GAMAY grape (c12, d12, e12, f12, g12.)

So, now we have a problem, we have to highlight MAYDAY and we have to “overwrite” GAMAY in an “appropriate” colour. It’s a black grape and I guess most people do their crosswords in black so maybe we have to overwrite in purple. How many people have purple pens?

STOP PRESS: See comment #2 below, Gamay grapes are RED.

One last (minor) gripe, the clues to 16a and 6d go over two columns, I wonder if the editor can try to avoid that as it makes the clues that wee bit more difficult.

Anyway, nice puzzle even though it did have me climbing the walls!
Thanks Pointer.