Listener 4812: Six Seconds by Kruger

Jigsaw time. I always ask myself why the device is being used. (Simply to make things difficult is, in Listener language, deprecated.) It often suggests that something is going on in the grid that the setter wants us to discover later rather than earlier, and which e.g. mapping out the clues and lengths straight away and revealing the unclued lights and their treatment (as here) would identify too early.

In such circumstances, and with no give-aways in the preamble or title, the only thing to do is to crack on and solve a wadge of clues, and then see if you have enough to start filling the grid. Usually a focus on the longer clues (fewer of them and more intersections) and how they fit together or with some other clues gets me started, with say a quarter of the clues solved, sometimes half: here it was nearer three-quarters before I had enough to see the two seven-letter clues beginning with P, which with a little trial and error opened up the SW corner and soon the rest of the grid.

The clues were good but tricky. I’d never heard for instance of 1a CANAPE as a bidding system and spent a long time trying to make something based on ACOL fit. The wordplay for 23a LACTIC still hasn’t clicked as I type this, but happily it only has one unch… 

So with the grid nearly full, what of the six special lights? By now I also had the message that told me to enter the second name of the 29^th President of the USA below the grid, the wonderful and unexpected GAMALIEL, so it was off to Wikipedia for a helpful page that listed presidents’ second names, bizarrely in the context of a vote as to which was the prettiest (tell me it could only happen in America…) and (with the penny dropping about the cell numbers) QUINCY, KNOX, ABRAM, BIRCHARD and WALKER were soon filled in; which left 33a, which was all blank (at least that’s how I resolved the entries that were shorter than their lights). So what to put in 33a?

President 33 was Harry S. Truman (despite argument to the contrary and the Listener Notes I believe he did use the stop) and the S was given (according to that hyper-accurate source of information Wikipedia) to commemorate both is grandfathers Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young, and the one letter did duty for both. commemorate both his grandfathers Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young, one letter doing duty for both. 

NB this was not the same for Ulysses S. Grant who was born Hiram Ulysses Grant, known as Ulysses, but had his name was submitted wrongly when he applied to West Point. (Since U.S. also = “Uncle Sam” he was then nicknamed Sam; of course.)

In his case the S. really did stand for nothing (so if he was the subject the initial could be expanded and the light could fairly be completed with nothing I suppose), but can the same be said of Truman? We can’t write an essay about his grandparents into the spaces. And we certainly can’t put S in the first (unched) square, since that messes up the Scrabble count (which has the feel of an editorial afterthought). We can though put in a S to complete EREMITE, leaving the other spaces blank.

But should we? It’s not exactly completing the entry, and we are told that six unclued entries should be so completed. (And I can’t accept that the name below the grid is an unclued entry.) Or should we just leave the whole light blank? But that doesn’t feel as if it is completing the entry either. On the other hand any entry is going to have at least one blank square in it (the first) because of the Scrabble count. So we are going to have unsignalled blanks whatever happens (shades of last week’s puzzle).

Frankly I think this one can be legitimately argued either way, depending on whether you say that his middle name was deliberately left as S so it could be ambiguous so S is complete and we fit it in where we can leaving real words (another unsignalled requirement if so), or say that the S stood for nothing (“had no real middle name”)* so nothing is what goes in.

Is the Scrabble count device is there precisely to stop us putting S in the first place (with the assumption that no sensible person would put it anywhere else) and so nothing is needed, or is it doing that to steer us towards putting the S in the sensible place below EREMITE?

I’m finding this one impossible to call. I’ve changed my mind more than once as you can see from my grid, but landed on blanks in the end. I’ll never get an all correct so only pride is at stake, but I do hope Kruger gives us a setter’s blog and the editors justify their marking scheme. As I see there is enough ambiguity to let both solutions stand, but I am happy to be proved wrong.

*which is what the printed solution and notes voted for

What an interesting set of second names!

Thank you for ECZEMA in a manner of speaking – I love cartes blanches but was rather thrown by the lack of a long word, until ECZEMA popped out and enabled me to get started on the gridfill.

I almost fell into the usual elephant traps: seeing MEDLAR at 29dn it seemed reasonable that 6dn would be QUINCE, but more seriously I was itching to put S in the cell marked 33ac, saved only by the Scrabble count. I thought S was Truman’s middle name, but bow to your (or the editors’) superior knowledge.

Very enjoyable thanks, and I’ve learned some new information about those in charge across the pond (things aren’t what they used to be … or reading about some of them, perhaps they are!).

No completed grid this time either, it went into the envelope with 4811 and was posted before I remembered to scan it!