Posted by Hihoba on September 29th, 2010
Interesting theme and an entertaining solve. My first reaction was that there seemed an awful lot to keep track of in the extensive rubric!
There were three types of clues,
Posted by Hihoba on September 29th, 2010
Interesting theme and an entertaining solve. My first reaction was that there seemed an awful lot to keep track of in the extensive rubric!
There were three types of clues, and four unclued lights to fill in.
Type 1 – one extra letter in wordplay – yielding instructions about how to fill in type 2 clues.
Type 2 – wordplay only clues
Type 3 – contained two consecutive extra letters to be ignored, yielding themed words when read in clued order.
None of the clues was too abstruse, so solving proceded at a slow but steady rate. It became clear that two of the unclued lights were ENGLAND and AUSTRALIA, while the other two were FOOTBALL and CRICKET.
We were looking for sporting pairs in the England and Australian teams.
The next breakthrough was to find CHAPPELL from the type 3 clues. There are Chappell brothers who play cricket for Australia, so we are looking for sporting siblings. With this guide I quickly found CHARLTON, NEVILLE and WAUGH. So we had two pairs of Australian cricketing brothers, and two pairs of English footballing brothers. (Two sets of twins too, but I don’t think that is relevant!)
The type 1 clues now yielded “ENTER OTHER MEMBER OF PAIR”
As I had solved 6A as BOBBY very early on (but with no idea what to do with it), this instruction became clear – BOBBY was to be entered as JACK (the Charlton brothers), similarly GREG was to be entered as IAN (Chappell), PHILIP as GARY (Neville) and STEVE as MARK (Waugh).
The theme to be highlighted appears on the diagonal from top left to bottom right, and is BROTHERS.
Time to complete – 1.5 to 2 hours – I’m no Biddlecombe!
|Clue||Grid Entry||Extra(s)||Definition: Wordplay|
|6||JACK||Charlton||BOBBY: Bobby pin is American for hairgrip|
|10||SORORIAL||CH||Family member’s: [S(CH)OOL AIR]*|
|11||BEAU||E||Dandy: BE(E) + A + U|
|12||TUBE||N||Railway: BUT reversed + (N)E|
|13||TROILUS||AP||Greek victim of old: [(c)R(AP)ULOSIT(y)]*|
|16||PROS||PE||Experts: RO(PE) in PS|
|17||BLAT||T||American for “make a lot of noise”: [(T)ABL(E)T]*|
|18||IAN||Chappell||GREG: ERG (sandy area) reversed + G(abon)|
|19||IODIDE||LL||Salt: I(LL) + DIDO reversed + (tabl)E|
|20||SLUE||E||Sudden change of position: [SE(q)(E)L]*|
|22||SIERRA||CH||High points: hidden in clasSI(C H)ER RAdio|
|23||INDABA||R||Conference: IN + D(R)AB + A|
|28||MAMMEE||AR||WI fruit: [M(AR)EMME]*|
|29||LEI||T||Wreath: LE(T) + I|
|30||MARK||Waugh||STEVE: STAVE (rod) with change of heart.|
|32||GARY||Neville||PHILIP: PHI + LIP|
|33||UTRILLO||H||French painter: [(H)ILL TOUR]*|
|34||OSSA||E||Bones: (M)OS(E)S + A|
|36||REEL||R||Dance: R(ule) + E(astern) + E(R)+ L(eft).|
|37||LIONIZER||LT||One greatly admiring: [LI(LT) ZERO IN]*|
|38||SNOB||ON||He thinks highly of class: [B(ON)N SO]*|
|1||EST||NE||Programme from Erhard (Erhard Seminars Training): (NE)(W)EST|
|2||NOUNAL||M||Name’s: NO + UN + (M)AL(asia)|
|3||LOERIE||VI||South African bird: (VI)OL reversed + ERIE|
|4||NITS||LL||Fools: [N STI(LL)]*|
|5||DARKISH||E||Not the brightest: [SAD HIK(E)R]*|
|7||ABIB||M||Month: A(M)BIT with B(arrell) for T(ime)|
|8||CELLAR||B||Wine store: CELL + (B)AR|
|9||KAUAI||E||Volcanic island: AUK reversed + b(E)Ar pIt|
|14||OEDIPEAN||EW||Complex guy’s: [(h)OPE N(EW) IDEA]*|
|15||DISIMMURE||R||Liberate: [MUM DI(R)E SIR]*|
|24||DARREN||F||Man: NERD reversed round A(F)R|
|25||HEROIC||AU||Larger-than-life: [CHOIR E(AU)]*|
|26||LESSEE||P||I deal with letter: LESS + (P)E + E|
|27||OATES||GH||Explorer: [(tal)E A (GH)OST]*|
|31||KILO||A||Weight: O(A)K reversed round IL|
|32||GOOR||I||Sugar: GOO + (I)R|
|35||ART||R||Practical skill: A Ra(R)iTy|