The completed grid represents doors which have been closed for over a year, there's clashes that need to be resolved, three blocked off cells in a diagonal in the middle. Down clues are normal, across clues have an extra word.
Sounds complex, but if there's only 15 clashes, I should look for normal intersections rather than clashes. I started with the down clues to see if any jumped out, and actually did pretty well on a first scan of the downs. Some cute clues here, I really liked 13 - EG replacing P in PRESS giving EGRESS. A bone thrown to us antipodeans with 22, UTES. 29 is a great word nicely clued, ULULATE being LULU reversed and then ATE.
With a little less than half the downs in place a trip to the acrosses. I always consider it a good sign when I can see the first clue, and it's another reversed word, TART reversed plus T gives TRAT and the first letter of our quote is W (Who, What, When, Where... isn't it always W?). This doesn't quite work out as 14 is CAROL giving me a H and 15 is OLPE, giving me an A. W-HA?
Back and forth, slogging through the clues, it appears most of the clashes (but not all) are in the column that starts with 11D and the row that starts with 18A. The phrase comes to me after seeing two F's together - S-FFL-D makes me think of "WE HAVE SHUFFLED OFF THIS MORTAL (COIL)" which fits with the theme of closed doors, and eventually gives me, woohoo, a filled grid and 15 clashes! Nine of them in the places I mentioned, and six scattered.
Now to find the "notices".
ummmmm....
I can't see anything.
MORTAL (COIL). Am I looking for coiled words? Names of people over a year dead who are hidden in coils in the grid? No...
Am I looking for coils of the word MORTAL? Maybe, I can find five of the six letters in MORTAL coiled in the top half of the grid. But I can't find all six.
Anything else that can help me? Looking at the row of 11d, I can make THE MERCHANTS from those letters. The across ones can make LIES in the middle, but nothing as clear as HERE LIES THE MERCHANTS (which is terrible parsing anyway).
Is is a case of an easy beginning and a difficult ending? I have no idea what logic step I am required to take next... The Tall'n, you have beaten me! And not for the first time, I got nowhere at all on that puzzle that turned into a godoku, and failed miserably on the A&D puzzle from just before I started my official battle. I thought I was going to get this, but you were too smart in the end - victory to the Listener Crossword, and my lead erodes.
Current standings: Listener 7, George 11. Current streak: Listener 1.
3 comments:
Feel free to flame away, but I just saw the solution and now go to lick my wounds... I should have gotten that, I was even thinking Shakespeare characters for a moment.
-George the dunderhead
We were in the same boat George. I had the quote, was looking for a coil, and found nothing! I wasn't sure about the number of clashes, I seemed to have more, but this one beat me too.
It was clever... but I am still kicking myself over seeing "the merchant" and not evening looking for a Venice that was right there. Especially since I was staring at that V in my "Dead actors" phase trying to turn it into an Olivier coil.
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