In last week's post, I said that sometimes I'm on a completely different wavelength to the setter. Well on a rare occasion I'm on the same wavelength as the setter (if Viking is reading, that really is meant as a compliment), and this led to 3974 being the rarest of things, a single-sitting solve. Not a fast one, having had plans fall through one night, I thought I'd have a bash at this one. And a few hours and a huge smile later, I had what you see above you.
The instructions say that down clues are normal, and it would make total sense to start there, but I saw I could work out the first three across clues from a first reading (and 13ac, which was the last clue to print on the first page). So I figured "why the hell not" and went through the acrosses looking for ones that jumped out at me. I had almost half of them at a first glance, and was relieved to see that my answers were the same length as the grid entries, so no adding or subtracting letters, which I'm not good at. And a lot of them had T's. Just a moment... all of them have T's!
To the downs, I wasn't having as much luck, most of the ones I got were scattered, and I was convinced that 9d was ROOMY (MOOR<=+Y). I had more luck with the last half of the down clues, particularly the SW corner, where I had FREET, EO IPSO, ON THE TURN, TRENTO (thanks to my handy-dandy mini atlas, of which I only use the index), OPTION, TUTUS and HUMITE (a good grounding in structural inorganic chemistry never hurts). From there it looks like the letters are jumbled in the across answers, but not too jumbled. The T's are in the wrong place. That would make the last letter in 30 an O, and looky here, we have PROUST along the diagonal. With the A and L already in place, I'm sure this is MARCEL PROUST running down the diagonal and the theme would be "Time Regained", the T is moved somewhere else in the across answers. And ROOMY is wrong. And when you think Proust, you think...
From there it was hunting and pecking to find the answers.
I'm glad I found the name and theme early, and I loved the puzzle. I wanted to call a friend who is a continental philosopher (and is fascinated by me trying to solve these), but it was 3am. An evening for a shut-in well spent, thanks Viking! And the run of the Listener is broken at 2.
Tally: George 7: Listener 5. Current streak, George 1
2 comments:
Well done George. I had got 3 quarters of the way through on this one, but had a good run with the following two, so went back to it 2 weeks later! Got as far as Marcel Proust (and therefore "lost time") but couldn't quite see how the across clues were rearranged; I thought they were jumbled somehow. It was just a question of "Listener Blindness", as I call it. Good theme though.
Thanks, fellow battler. It is frustrating to be so close but yet so far, I've done it twice this year (see 3972: Unusual and 3967: Lots to find). It frustrates me more when I have the theme but can't apply it than when I have most of the answers and can't spot the theme.
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