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Clues by Vlad and Grid by Gin
Theme: The Third Man
The winner of the July puzzle were Denise Brocklehurst and Monica Jeffrey of Weston under Wetherley.
We were told that this puzzle marks a 58th and 70th anniversary of important dates in the life of one of a famous group (two of whose colleagues have been clued without definition). His epithet is unclued, but should appear highlighted in the completed grid. His previously hidden name (3) and ‘occupation’ (4) should also then be revealed, using new letters that must first be inserted into the hollowed-out dark squares on levels 5 and 3 respectively. In total, 7 of these hollowed-out squares need to be filled with a letter that (together with the adjacent letters) will form a run of (at least) 3 consecutive letters of the alphabet. Anagrams of these inserted letters will then supply the name (level 5) and occupation (level 3) that must be submitted with your solution.
First I need to make a sincere apology to you all. In the printed version of the calendar all the dark squares in levels 3 and 5 were solid, not hollowed out. We missed this in the checking process and I only realised it when I came to solve the puzzle just this week. (The online version has hollowed out squares). This made the description of the theme and the puzzle end game, which is in any case decidedly complex, even more difficult to follow. Congratulations to all of you who managed to overcome this additional handicap.
As usual when the rubric is at all abstruse I get straight into the solving. This was great fun with one wonderfully misleading solution, GREENE, which, coupled with THE THIRD MAN, proved a seductive blind alley and one which convinced me for quite a while. Full marks to Gin for this. The two clues with no definition leading to BURGESS and MACLEAN were decidedly tricky and came much later in the solve for me. Clearly we are in the realm of the Cambridge 5 and after a different third man.
So to the end game; this is very definitely a creative new innovation for 3D crosswords. Despite knowing at this stage that we are looking for Kim Philby it took me quite a while to fit ‘I’, ‘K’ and ‘M’ into the 5th row of the grid in the sequence H (I) J (K) L (M) N. Despite being freshly armed with the know-how it took a little longer to fit MOLE into the 3rd layer of the grid. Very satisfying.
So to the anniversaries; the defections of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess cast suspicion over Philby, resulting in his resignation from MI6 in July 1951, 70 years ago. He was publicly exonerated in 1955, after which he resumed his career as both a journalist and a spy. In January 1963, 58 years ago, having finally been unmasked as a Soviet agent, Philby defected to Moscow, where he lived until his death in 1988.
Grid solution
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