The winner of the June puzzle is Kevin McDermid of Newcastle Upon Tyne.
A busy grid this month at 7x5x7 and 38 entries, with some intriguing unclued entries. The instructions tell us this is in service of a theme. Who is it about? Yes!
There were a few awkward words in the answers, but the cluing is pretty straightforward. Trickiest clue for me was probably 11, where you need to anagram one of the other answers starting at 29 (FARSI+EE)*. Pretty sure it made sense when I did it, but I was confused when I revisited it for this review!
I don’t think I’ve seen ANKUSES in the plural before, but the surface of the clue paints a picture. I’m not sure I’d want to yank an elephant though. Sounds dangerous.
OMENTAL was a good use of those checks but a bit of an obscure word. Cluing was clear, but might be hard if you didn’t have checks yet.
The simple clue of Earth? for PLANET OF THE APES may have been tricky for anyone unfamiliar with the film, but, technically, Earth is the planet of all the (real) lifeforms we know of. (Apologies to any Gallifreyans reading this.)
But it’s rather important as an entry because it shares most of its lights with PLANET OF THE SPIDERS, the Doctor Who serial which is the thematic seed of the puzzle.
So what of the unclued entries? It’s pretty easy to suss that 32 is SURNAME. If you’re hip to the theme, that will get you (23) PERTWEE and (33) TENNANT. Reading the middle layer left-to-right and back-to-front yields REGENERATION.
We’re told to change these names to bring them right up to date. You can replace the checks and middle letter of PERTWEE with BAKER to get new Away words (reflecting the regeneration commemorated here). Similarly, you can do the same with TENNANT and GATWA (showing the latest).
The instructions suggest this is possible because the TARDIS (yellow cells, top-to-bottom) is BIGGER ON THE INSIDE. The idea is that you can write the second and fourth letters larger to fill the space, though that still leaves the words normally sized on the most inside. I think the idea was good but the instructions muddied the waters.
The pictorial clue is ten ants surrounding a knight from chess, but trimmed on the right — TEN(N)ANTs.
Transforming names is a good mechanism and thematic, but it’s not very slick here (only makes sense in one of three directions). Getting all the pieces to fall into place was quite a feat of construction, though, and this puzzle is well worth your time, lord.
