Theme: The Boston Tea Party, with sub-themes of teas and party
The winner of the July puzzle is Norah Clewes of Cheshire.
Setters and designers like to set themselves tasks: for some it is the pangram (or, for the really twisted, the triple pangram); for others the hiding of a theme, or the leaving for the solver to discover a hidden message often known for historic reasons as a Nina. Quite often we find that all the entries in one direction have been thematically treated. It is a very rare achievement to see all the lights in a two-dimensional puzzle featuring thematic treatment.
Here ‘etc’ — let us call a magician a magician, and name him as Nick Inglis — has made all his entries thematically treated, in three dimensions. The closest parallel I can remember in recent 3D puzzles was what Soup did last year with all those Rs and Ws, but here we have every entry being either a *, or a ‡, or else a solution which lacks at least one T but is still a real word. Not lightly was the Ray Parry-Morris Trophy awarded to this grid!
So what’s it all about?
As very often, the way in is via the ‘Easter Egg’ task. Day 4 gives us a nice easy start (thank you, Enigmatist, you have not always been like that). Boston. Now, is the photograph one of Boston, Lincs? Where is St Botolph’s Church? Is the Lincolnshire countryside near the mouth of the Witham really that hilly? I am ashamed to say that I cannot answer those questions. How clever to hide the only boat displaying a name, and presumably the port where registered, behind the instructions. I have seen Boston Lincs only from Hunstanton, and that on a rare clear day. Is that it? One thing I know: it is not Boston Massachusetts. And yet…
Two clues which I solved reasonably early were 20 and 32: here we have MISDEALT and TERROR. Now, those two have one letter in common which can be jettisoned while keeping real words. And so the T is discovered.
Next we find that the asterisked clues, also helpfully dealt with by Enigmatist, are BOHEA and ASSAM (what a nice clue, by the way: I was sadly unaware of Dooley Wilson, but these puzzles are here to educate us, are they not?) CREAM comes from a different angle, but using our two bearings we find that we are dealing with tea.
Finally, the obelus falls into place, with a nice anagram of it’s March second (s) giving neatly and unexpectedly CHRISTMAS, and the rather complicated CEILIDH — taken to international causes us certainly a slight strain of our credibility muscles, as the energy (E) is taken to the I (international) and the boisterous child is full of them both — or that’s how I read it! Anyway, they are both sorts of party, and our theme is complete. Now we can see why all that T was being thrown out — as if the thematically multiple CHES(T)S (have you seen that done before, two identical entries with totally different clues?) — had not pointed the way also.
We have already seen some ingenious clueing. However, my favourites here — from a setter who incidentally collects favourites in his own column alongside the excellent Inquisitor puzzles — are those for LE(TT)ISH and for SPINE(T). I liked the doctor in the House — the capitalising of one word but not the other theoretically gave it away, but you’d have to be on excellent form to see that — and the surface of that swearing following the call for another service — one hopes, in the restaurant rather than the cathedral, though really it was on the tennis court — was a tickler.
However, the prizes for inventiveness here seem to me to go at least equally to the designer. Knowing about LEISH, and above all seeing how PATELLAS can become PAELLAS is brilliant — what helps is the complete lack of relationship between the two words — and Enigmatist’s ‘pair of personal caps(!)’ while ‘tell a’ is nested in the unrelated ‘pas’ complements the idea perfectly.
Frank Paul cannot be accused of giving the CEILIDH away, though I did post-solve it nicely, knowing a thing or two about nanograms, if not about postcodes in the North-East of England: Sunderland? Thirsk? As I said, we are here to be educated.
Lovely puzzle: a grid to be proud of, and clued with just the right blend of help and challenge.
As promised in last month's newsletter, we have released an Extra puzzle as a tribute to Nutmeg. The July Extra grid was designed by Bozzy and clued by Curmudgeon and will be open for entries until the end of August.
A correct entry for an Extra puzzle counts towards your annual total for the World Championship qualification, so if you've missed one this year, or want to build a buffer, this is an opportunity to boost your score.
Upcoming deadlines
Entries for the July Extra puzzle by Curmudgeon and Bozzy are due by August 31.
Entries for the August puzzle by Sirius are due by August 31.
