Hi all, I hope this blog finds you well. Having left the puzzle until far later than is wise, I was very relieved and grateful to find an EV which I could manage between one work day ending and the next beginning. (And I’m not being cute and talking about Friday – Monday!) A very high entertainment/time ratio, for which thumbs up and thanks to Gaston.
The preamble reads:
Reading clockwise from the top left cell, the perimeter of the grid gives words of the same length in thematic order, each one completing a question beginning ‘What is… ?’; unclued entries are the answers to the questions. 14 clues contain a single letter misprint in their definition; in clue order, the corrected letters spell out a better title for the puzzle. Definite and indefinite articles are missing from questions and answers.
Solvers finding the puzzle A WASTE OF TIME should consider the unchecked letters in the perimeter, which could make NJNCISNAMTEXTOHMRU. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.
A nice normal start, just some misprints to watch out for. Progress was smooth, and I didn’t feel the need to look at the misprinted letters until I had most of them. After a couple of read-throughs of the preamble I had decided that it was the discarded letters we were meant to collect, not the corrections to the misprints. A quick look at the nonsense I’d gathered convinced me otherwise! The “better title for the puzzle” was then revealed as:
Some of the unclued entries were easy to deduce from their checking letters, and examination of the perimeter entries confirmed the kind of “what if?” questions being posed. With one of the unclued entries evidently MOUNTAIN, _U_G__AU was enough to suggest JUNGFRAU. The next eight cells of the perimeter were not about to give up their secrets, but after that – aha – the BATTLE of BLENHEIM. And so on, until my last two, the DRAMA and the DANCE, which needed a little tracking down online. I never was very good at anything other than Science and Nature (and not so great at Nature!).
Our questions fit into the six categories of the board game Trivial Pursuit:
| (Geography) | What is … | the JUNGFRAU? | A MOUNTAIN |
| (Entertainment) | What is … | EXCUSE-ME? | A DANCE |
| (History) | What is … | BLENHEIM? | A BATTLE |
| (Arts & Literature) | What is … | ALCESTIS? | A DRAMA |
| (Science & Nature) | What is … | ANTIMONY? | An ELEMENT |
| (Sports & Leisure) | What is … | a SHORT LEG? | A FIELDER |
Edit: Thanks to ginge and other commenters for pointing out a lovely subtlety I’d missed – the given arrangement of the unchecked letters comprises examples from each of the six categories, in order:
NJNCISNAMTEXTOHMRU
(Colours not required)
| Clue No | ANSWER | Clue with definition underlined | |
| Explanation, with quoted indicators in italics and letters appearing in the ANSWER capitalised and emboldened | |||
| Across | |||
| 7a | GLEE | Enjoyment of golf shelter (4) | |
| G (golf) + LEE (shelter) | |||
| 8a | INTRUSIVE | Nosy Gaston’s followed, mostly in order to keep safe (9) | |
| I’VE (Gaston’s) after (followed) all but the last letter of (mostly) IN TRUSt (in order to keep safe). The unconventional past tense indicator makes me doubt my parsing here | |||
| 11a | UPAS | High and so [f]<t>ree (4) | T |
| UP (high) and AS (so) | |||
| 12a | LAMELY | Beat City in unsatisfactory way (6) | |
| LAM (beat) + ELY (city) | |||
| 14a | GELDER | One who sorts wine on returning (6) | |
| RED (wine) and LEG (on) reversed (returning) | |||
| 15a | SUB | [D]<r>eserve vehicle to be reversed (3) | R |
| BUS (vehicle) backwards (to be reversed) | |||
| 16a | RESPELLS | Has another go at writing notes on antique parchments (8) | |
| RES (notes) next to (on) PELLS (antique parchments) | |||
| 19a | ANGEL | Guardian is a fixer (5) | |
| AN (a) + GEL (fixer) | |||
| 21a | SERMONEER | One delivers hom[e]<i>ly sneer more angrily (9) | I |
| SNEER MORE anagrammed (angrily) | |||
| 24a | HAINS | Discount foremost of ranges for Glasgow’s sa[l]<v>es (5) | V |
| Remove (discount) the first letter of (foremost of) cHAINS (ranges) | |||
| 27a | SMA | T[o]<i>ny in Perth, seldom discontented Australian (3) | I |
| SeldoM without its inner letters (discontented) + A (Australian) | |||
| 29a | TEDDIE | Woman’s undergarment having bust tie-dyed? Not unknown (6) | |
| An anagram of (bust) TIE–D[y]ED without (not) Y (unknown) | |||
| 30a | YOGURT | Go back into tent for food (6) | |
| GO reversed (back) goes into YURT (tent) | |||
| 31a | GRANDE | Gre[e]<a>t French Republican coming forward in view (6) | A |
| R (Republican) moved towards the front of (coming forward in) GANDER (view) | |||
| 32a | LIAR | Storyteller’s instrument, we hear (4) | |
| This sounds like (… we hear) LYRE (instrument) | |||
| 33a | A MINORI | One child independent from the [m]<l>ess? (7, two words) | L |
| A (one) + MINOR (child) + I (independent) | |||
| 34a | OGEN MELON | Lemon gone bad? Try this! (9, two words) | |
| LEMON GONE anagrammed (bad) | |||
| 35a | CLAM | One fifty in the morning, one doesn’t say much (4) | |
| CL (one fifty, 150) + AM (in the morning) | |||
| Down | |||
| 1d | ULLAGES | Seagull flies and fills up (7) | |
| SEAGULL is anagrammed (flies) | |||
| 2d | GEMEL | Twin in the [c]<p>ast of stage melodrama (5) | P |
| The answer is part of staGE MELodrama | |||
| 3d | ATTAR | Climbing palm almost reveals fragrant oil (5) | |
| The reversal of (climbing) RATTAn (palm) without its last letter (almost) | |||
| 4d | URUBUS | Birds initially uproot the raspberry (6) | |
| The first letter of (initially) Uproot + RUBUS (the raspberry) | |||
| 5d | EUPAD | Paused anxiously, missing special antiseptic powder (5) | |
| PAU[s]ED anagrammed (anxiously) without (missing) S (special) | |||
| 6d | CISTS | Tombs of stringed-instrument players missing measure of length (5) | |
| C[ell]ISTS (stringed-instrument players) without (missing) ELL (measure of length) | |||
| 9d | SATINET | Type of cloth placed over a snare (7) | |
| SAT (placed) preceding (over, in a down answer) I (a) + NET (snare) | |||
| 10d | VALUE | Cost of erecting European toilet? (5) | |
| Reversal of (erecting) EU (European) with LAV (toilet) | |||
| 13d | MESSI | Footballer is untidy, we hear (5) | |
| Lionel MESSI sounds like (… we hear) MESSY (untidy) | |||
| 17d | PENGUIN | Enclose Northern instrument in great a[r]<u>k of yesteryear (7) | U |
| PEN (enclose) + GU (Northern instrument) + IN (from the clue) | |||
| 18d | LOO | Male leaving tower’s [b]<r>est room (3) | R |
| M (male) removed from (leaving) LOO[m] (tower) | |||
| 20d | GRAIN | [N]<s>eed relative to embrace one (5) | S |
| GRAN (relative) surrounding (to embrace) I (one) | |||
| 22d | ENDRINS | B[i]<u>g killers cooked dinners (7) | U |
| An anagram of (cooked) DINNERS | |||
| 23d | DIEDRAL | Stop to fatten up, being bound by two planes (7) | |
| DIE (stop) followed by LARD (to fatten) written in reverse (up, in a down entry) | |||
| 25d | AMONG | [A]<i>n adult cat bearing name (6) | I |
| A (adult) + MOG (cat) containing (bearing) N (name) | |||
| 26d | MITRES | Small children collecting right headwear (6) | |
| MITES (small children) containing (collecting) R (right) | |||
| 28d | AGLET | [B]<t>ag of silver allowed (5) | T |
| AG (silver) + LET (allowed) | |||
| 29d | THALI | Grace’s unfinished Indian meal (5) | |
| THALI[a] (Grace) is unfinished | |||
A nice touch from Gaston that the order of the given unchecked perimeter letters can be split into six examples of the different categories.
Yes a really good puzzle – thanks Gaston. Initially the random jumble of unchecked perimeter letters looked very odd but it made sense at the end. I haven’t encountered Trivial Pursuit for many years so it was a nice reminder of a game I used to enjoy. Thanks for the blog Kitty.
Having got my first pair (SHORT LEG and FIELDER) I was gently misled into a cricket theme. JUNGFRAU, though, far from leading to ‘maiden’, clearly had to be matched to MOUNTAIN, and the idea behind the theme became clear, although I didn’t know what the sequence was, or why. I liked the fact that no qustion/answer pair was a clue to any other.
On completing the grid I found that I had collected all letters of TRIVIAL PURSUIT except the first I, and that was when I finally parsed SERMONEER properly, ‘homely’ changing very neatly into ‘homily’.
Not knowing much about Trivial Pursuit I guessed at the end that the subjects here were in the same order as in the game, as confirmed and colourfully illustrated above.
Thanks to Gaston, and to Kitty for the blog.
An enjoyable puzzle, and the organisation of the very unpromising set of unches into apposite acronyms and so on was an elegant final touch, as was the consistent length criterion. I do like puzzles which demonstrate that the setter hasn’t just run with a theme but instead has sought to impose structure on its realisation.
Very enjoyable, and not a waste of time at all! It’s years since I played Trivial Pursuit, which I never won because I could never get the wedge for the sport category. I didn’t notice the nice touch with the unchecked letters when solving, though it was pointed out later on Crossword Solver Forum.
What a relief the EV was saved: it is at the top of its game at the moment.
A lovely puzzle. Like Alan@3, my first to drop was Short Leg and I thought it was a cricket themed puzzle. It helped knowing all the perimeter entries were of the same length, so when Jungfrau became my second to drop things started to take shape.
I didn’t pick up the significance of the unchecked letters, that’s a great touch from Gaston.
Great blog with the appropriate colours, thanks to Kitty.
A smashing EV !
We enjoyed this but yet again managed to just about fill the grid without recognising what the theme was -that’s our problem, not Gaston’s. A fine, original idea. Thanks to Gaston and Kitty.
A lovely puzzle with some nice touches. Have not played the game for years but remembered the categories. Loved the same-length questions and groupings of unchecked letters. Thanks Gaston and Kitty.