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Not much by way of instruction. We are simply told that clues with asterisks are 1 of 44 and lack definitions and that cells indicated boldly are thematic.
I designed this crossword as Mang two years ago and haven’t properly looked at it since then. So it was interesting to set about solving it from scratch now. I am a great fan of Nutmeg as a setter and so I approached the task with great anticipation. Like some of you I thought that Nutmeg excelled by including Sci Fi/Fact references in a number of the clues for non-thematic solutions.
I was amazed at how much I had completely forgotten. In particular I had no recollection of a number of the Star Trek aliens and, like most of you, I was on the internet to check and confirm before entering them.
One of the problems with the 7 dials grid format is that the letters of the central core are in the answers to lots of the diametric clues. I wanted to make it more difficult and so clued it cryptically as 21, 41, 15 (6) ODD SQUARE EXOTICS. In practice, of course, what became evident very quickly was that by the nature of the grid ALIENS emerged without having to solve the clue itself.
There were some superb clues. Among my favourites was Day 45: "Crooks close to President and his accommodating First Lady" for THIEVES. ‘AM’ captured the fortuitous topicality of the clue in a splendid feedback comment:
Thanks to Nutmeg for a terrific alien challenge! The unclued were a number of Star Trek humanoids (“The Next Generation”). The clue for THIEVES was great – timely and relevant. The additional cells indicated BOLDLY also hinted nicely at one of history’s most famous split infinitives – “to boldly go ….”. Frank Paul’s DUCKLING without the DUC was also cute. [AM]
What further delighted me about AM’s comment was the reference to BOLDLY and the famous Star Trek split infinitive. I have to confess that, much to my shame, I had missed this allusion myself. AM also picked up on Frank Paul’s excellent picture clue which I too thought was well worth a mention.
Alan Goddard
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