Enigmatic Variations No. 1177: Neigh by Gos

The preamble this week told us we needed to uncover a murder mystery novel, the title of which was cryptically represented. This was probably given by the title of our puzzle, but I already had a sneaky suspicion of the novel’s author, given the unchecked letters of the two 1ac entries — CARR ON GRANGE. Moreover, I couldn’t help thinking of a Listener puzzle a couple of years back which had a mystery novel and its famous locked room lecture as its theme. Exactly which puzzle that was would have to wait until later.

There were lots of people to find, all of whom seemed to have titles of their own. The first row of the grid would reveal the claimant to a title, and would need to be replaced by the novel’s true title holder. I decided that everything would become clear as soon as I managed to solve the clues so I started at 8ac, 1ac being unclued.

The first half dozen across clues were slotted in very quickly, and most of the across entries were in the grid after my initial pass through the clues, well within half an hour. The down clues were almost as forgiving, and it wasn’t much longer before the grid was completed, probably within 90 minutes.

7dn, for some reason, held me up for longer than I would normally care to admit. I failed to grasp that ‘planting’ was the definition, but thought that was likely to be ‘flowers’. Instead, ‘flowers’ was the anagram indicator, and I (second of hIs) GARDENS was the jumble giving EARDING. It’s so annoying when you assume a certain structure for a clue only to be proved totally wrong.

I was quite surprised that the grid was asymmetrical, and also that there seemed to be a lot of multi-word answers. In fact, there were six, but it seemed a lot more. I do like symmetry, but don’t lose sleep over a puzzle that lacks it.

The letters in the ringed cells gave LDOLERIEDN plus the two in the top row that would be provided by the eventual title holder. Having read the novel which was the subject of the Listener puzzle mentioned above, I knew that its sleuth was DR GIDEON FELL, and it seemed that he was also here for the taking as well, G and F notwithstanding.

I needed Google to uncover the exact title, theme and characters of the novel, and it wasn’t long before the title of our puzzle led me to The Crooked HINGE (anagram of ‘Neigh’) by John Dickson Carr, who was also the author used for the theme of said Listener. Reference to The Crossword Database also revealed that earlier puzzle to be by Gos, but I’m not sure that knowing this would have helped too much.

All that was left was to replace MR PATRICK GORE, whose name fitted with the letters which I had in the top row, with JOHN FARNLEIGH who was the true title holder in the novel and gave new down words when entered at 1ac. The F and G missing from DR GIDEON FELL were finally provided by the two ringed cells in the top row.

All in all, an entertaining puzzle from Gos, thanks. Who knows what other Carr novels he’ll use for his next theme!

Legend:
Definition in clue
ABC* = anagram
ABC< = reversal
abCDef = hidden