The winner of the October puzzle is Julie Allen from Queensland.
Vlad and Aramis have put forward a theme I knew virtually nothing about, with clues sufficiently difficult to force me into a second session before I knew what the theme was. This is one of the year's more difficult puzzles and more unusual grid-fills.
SUN + DAYTIME x 2 (31), from the technical-looking diagram provided by Frank Paul apparently for Day 30, was never going to appear until I had solved the whole thing. And yet it's actually a perfectly reasonable charade of the wittier kind – provided you give FP the benefit of the doubt over whether he's really pretending to clue one day while actually clueing another. He wouldn't – would he? As I failed badly at both – I'd been wondering what was published on the subject of astronomical measurements at Stonehenge in 1822… Nowhere near. And Graham Fox's October Sun whose beams most glorious are was giving nothing away either.
It's a highly ambitious grid in other ways. Three Zs made for some unusual self-searching, but not for long, since the clue to MAGAZINE was an early casualty, and that eventually let us in. Aramis is not afraid of snakes, and nor am I – this sort, anyway. All three central boulevards were found to go only part of their solution-carrying distance, and only half of the other 7-letter lights. This, I think, makes for more mystification: while a very ship-shape grid, like most of those I have reviewed thus far, may be a great achievement in itself, the going-round-corners aspect does add some spice to the solving.
So do tricky clues. Vlad is well-known to Guardian solvers for his complex but fair clueing, together with the odd political reference. None of those here: it's hard enough to predict the next month in that area, never mind when setting over a year in advance. But we had COLUMN, where the body and the smoker were tough to find; BERTIE, requiring some GK as well as a sideways look at the calendar; PUBLISH, where an unusual anagram indicator went well with the chosen definition of 'divulge'; and an anagrammed acrostic in PRINT. By the time these few were worked out, it was clear that the publication referred to in the rubric was to be a newspaper.
There were two clues which gave away the identity of that paper, but for my own reasons I had not tumbled to them quickly enough. The reference to Neil in the clue for EDITOR would have been conclusive, but I found it hard to solve, through not thinking of that sort of designer. Juxtaposing that word with English, thereby inhibiting certain lines of thought, is one of those tricks which we can miss but which make Vlad and his colleagues such expert bamboozlers. Yes, it was Dior. I did manage to get OZZIE from the rather old-fashioned rozzer-related clue, but I was slow to see Mr Murdoch – whom some might see as a prototype for those later, higher-tech incursions into the manipulation of democratic systems from beyond the frontier – as both Ozzie and Mogul.
Of course, once THE SUNDAY TIMES was known to be the subject, solving its own clue became easy – in retrospect. What could be expressed (STUDY IN A)* in THEME + S was no giveaway piece of wordplay; while as a virtually & lit. clue also, it allowed no easy definition to play with. The references to Neil, thalidomide (subject of that determined and justified campaign for which many will be thankful to the S T to this day) and magazines were then made clear.
I did wonder about the pairing of THE SUN with the thematic newspaper. It occurred to me to ask myself whether THE SUN might have been profitably left in the open, with DAYTIMES as another light, leaving the solver to find their own 200-year-old publication? However, we were well-treated here, with a high proportion of thematic items and some most teasing clues.
An off-beat observation to finish: at some point in around 1990, a television advertisement was filmed not far from my neck of the woods, proclaiming that its subject was 'not a snooze-paper'. It clearly targeted the Sunday Times, which by then seemed to have about a hundred and fifty constituent parts; and featured the sign showing that the happy wanderer was entering the Norfolk village of Little Snoring. I think this was the launch of the Mail on Sunday. Those Zs brought it all back to me. As a subscriber to the Observer, I shall refrain from commenting further, whether on the weight of the News International organ, or the editorial policy of that of DMG.
AGC
I must update something I wrote on the August puzzle: Mr T Hill no longer runs his lightning routes in the state of Missouri, but for those Dolphins of Miami FL.
Grid Solution
October 2022 solution continued ...
See the full list of solutions and explanations and solvers' comments on our website. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Qualification: you must have successfully solved 12 puzzles during 2022. When you submit your monthly puzzle entry, your acknowledgement email contains your progress status. There is also a “check your progress” link on our Puzzles Page. Solving the November Extra will give you an extra boost towards getting the required 12.
Your tasks will be:
To solve the November Extra crossword puzzle
To create a 3D grid suitable for inclusion in our 2024 calendar
To write clues for two words or phrases which will be revealed in the next newsletter.
RPM Grid Design Trophy
This competition is open to anyone and everyone. The task will be to design a grid suitable for inclusion in our 2024 calendar.
Supplementary Newsletter
A supplementary newsletter to be published in the next couple of weeks will include the November Extra puzzle, which has been designed by Bozzy and clued by Raich of Guardian fame. It will also include detailed guidance and instructions with links to a full variety of grids suitable for downloading.
Upcoming deadlines
Entries for the November puzzle by Shark are due by November 30.
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