AZED CROSSWORD 1056

ENTRAIN def. ASTHORE

1.  F. R. Palmer: What troubles are not lessened by love in life? (love; anag. less O + in).

2.  T. J. Moorey: Pop on the tube comes from blasted trannie ( pop; anag.).

3.  C. J. Morse: French life styles are not ‘in’ without love (love; anag. less 0 + in).

VHC

J. R. Beresford: A long time without love? Prepare for performance with this! (love; e(0)n + train).

H. J. Bradbury: Go in the Louvre, which somehow gives new heart to painters (heart; anag. incl. n).

E. Chalkley: Gaiety theatre drama where love is murdered on The Orient Express? (love; N(o) in E train).

C. A. Clarke: Sporting Etonian runs for love – that’s the spirit (love; r for 0 in anag.).

N. C. Dexter: One’s to get aboard in King’s X possibly, bidding farewell first to sweetheart (sweetheart; a in anag. of in R’s ten, less s, & lit.).

V. Dixon: Esprit-style dash, featuring fancy trannie (fancy; dash, 2 meanings).

Dr I. S. Fletcher: To leave Victoria possibly in tears almost breaks one’s heart (heart; anag. less s + n).

P. F. Henderson: Elevated tone drops when expressing love life in Paris (love; en(o)t (rev.) + rain).

F. P. N. Lake: Love poetry specialist and her associates go about their business uplifted in spirit (love; art in Nine (all rev.)).

A. Lawrie: Go too near in slips and it’s out for ducks (ducks; anag. less 00).

R. K. Lumsdon: Abandoned as draw after ten balls with weather fit for ducks (ducks; anag. + rain).

H. W. Massingham: Board indicates no ducks in batting ratio, none (ducks; anag. less 00).

R. S. Morse: Go – as Joe Public might, using public transport (joe; 2 meanings).

R. F. Naish: What God did in Noah’s day, without a glimmer of sunshine, to get company on board (sunshine; (s)ent rain).

R. Phillips: Does this friskiness get dearest in on frolicking (dearest; comp. anag.).

D. R. Robinson: Thrilled to have no sun? Then weather for ducks must give you ‘go’ (ducks; (s)ent rain).

W. J. M. Scotland: Spirit? Tar, one without love, gets drunk at home (love; anag. less 0 + in).

D. L. Turner: Stir up an inert love of life (love; anag.).

D. Williamson: Itinerant at heart might set out so (heart; anag. of middle letters & lit.).

HC

R. L. Baker, M. Barley, E. A. Beaulah, C. J. Brougham, E. J. Burge, Dr J. Burscough, P. Cargill, G. P. Conway, R. Dean, M. Earle, B. Franco, H. Freeman, R. R. Greenfield, C. R. Gumbrell, R. S. Haddock, V. G. Henderson, A. W. Hill, E. M. Holroyd, R. J. Hooper, Mrs D. B. Jenkinson, J. F. Jones, J. C. Leyland, C. Loving, Mrs J. Mackie, D. F. Manley, P. W. Marlow, Dr E. J. Miller, C. G. Millin, Miss D. F. Milne, T. W. Mortimer, G. M. Neighbour, D. Pendrey, Mrs A. Price, H. L. Rhodes, M. Sanderson, A. J. Shields, W. K. M. Slimmings, R. G. Smith, R. Stocks, J. B. Sweeting, R. C. Teuton, A. J. Wardrop, Mrs M. P. Webber, I. J. Wilcock, Mrs H. D. Williams.
 

COMMENTS
295 entries, with very few mistakes, most of them due to failure to spot which word to clue. One very experienced solver (who did not make this mistake, and is in the lists above) expressed a hankering for ‘the days of Ximenes who was far more generous with his preamble’. I’m puzzled by this since the main part of my WN explanation is word-for-word the same as X’s – there seemed no need to change it. I do recall a period when X responded to the suggestion of a solver by printing the clues for his WN puzzles in groups according to word length but I never felt that this helped much. It is one of the harder types of special, I know, and the small entry reflects this. Another experienced competitor commented that he finds WN puzzles get harder as more clues are solved. I wonder if this a common experience and if so, why it should be. They certainly take much longer to compile than most other types, for obvious reasons. When constructing the grid I don’t consciously try to arrange connections between words of the same length, though I do look to fill it with words with a good range of meanings. Words like STRONTIA give little help to the setter! So I thought ASTHORE was reasonably generous as the subsidiary clue-word, even though many found it hard to include a word for it in their clue for ENTRAIN. Where many came unstuck, including some quite experienced competitors, was by including in their clue a definition for ASTHORE which was not an integral part of the ENTRAIN clue but simply tacked on, as it were. This is to miss the whole point of the puzzle, the extra challenge of building a definition of one word into a clue for a quite different word, and doing this in a reasonable number of words. I always aim to make WN clues no longer than straightforward plain ones.
 
A final footnote on the Aganippe/Pierian spring debate. Another solver points out that, in Chambers, Boeotia is described as ‘proverbial for the dullness of its inhabitants’. Does this not, he suggests, indicate the unlikelihood of Aganippe’s having been located in Boeotia?