4037: Hedge-sparrow’s S (or First in a Series!!)
Posted by Dave Hennings on 26 June 2009
After the trials and tribulations of last week’s Brimstone numerical, down to earth with extra letters and my far from favourite puzzle feature … clashes! They are sadistic little things, taunting you with a letter that purports to be correct, while giggling behind the scenes at their deception.
A quick run through the clues got a fair response, including BAATHISTS, CONDEMN and three of the four answers in the outside columns. As has happened too often in recent weeks, progress was then a bit slow, but it wasn’t long before I had ?HEVO??GE for the extra letters in the down clues, so the 1976 film “The Voyage of the Damned” was the theme of the puzzle. This told of a ship carrying Jewish refugees from Germany to Cuba in 1939 and was based on a true story. It featured a host of stars including James Mason, fresh from his Enigmatic Variations appearance a few weeks before, and Faye Dunaway, whose Bonnie and Clyde was a recent Inquisitor!
A couple of hours later, and EVOLUTION (1ac), GALAPAGOS (45ac) and SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST in the extra letters of the across answers proved that it wasn’t a movie theme after all, but Darwin, who I’d been expecting a couple of months back at the time of the various TV documentaries, but had since forgotten about. I blame Joe Haydn! So it was THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE and the letters of THE FITTEST which presumably had to survive in the clashing squares. The four asterisked entries just seemed to get jumbled, which I suppose is thematic evolution(?).
Now those clashes again. It’s bad enough when an entry has just one clash, but two or more is just naughty. Here we had DESTINE, TEETH, GALL and ASH with two each, but I have to say that the clues were fair and quite straightforward. But don’t mention Mr E’s golf game back in April where one 5-letter word had four clashes and a 6-letter word had five clashes.
Finally there was Charlie boy appearing in the central down entry. Replacing him with the last six extra letters in the downs, PPPAAA, which had seemed a trifle bizarre at the time of solving, gave MAN-MAT-OAT-OPT-APT-APE. Sorry, I mean the other way round; man is at the top of the evolutionary tree … isn’t he?
A good puzzle by Hedge-sparrow. I look forward to his next … not to mention half dozen or more Darwins over the coming weeks!
