All the Henrys I know except Clay, Matisse and Thoreau

First thing that struck me after printing off Listener 4002: A Process of Induction by Emkay was the grid. That's a very nice-looking grid, blank perimeter, criss-crossing of three long answers, the word in the middle meaning that it's pretty neatly blocked off into four quarters. I didn't weigh in on the discussion in the Crossword Club, but I have an aesthetic fondness for symmetric grids.

According to the Listener site, Emkay's last puzzle was in 2005, when I wasn't regularly attempting the Listener, and I don't recall that last puzzle, so here's a new setter for me.

The preamble suggests a plan of attack - the long answers are to be entered normally, as are any words that don't touch the perimeter. So let's start with those...

I "cheated" almost straight away... the definition for 15ac sounded like it should be ------SPHERIC... tropospheric isn't the right number of letters, nor is ionospheric or mesospheric. THERMOSPHERIC is, and I coudn't make it match the wordplay, but a search on ------SPHERIC on word wizards turned up CHROMOSPHERIC, which would fit the wordplay as R in C,Ho,Mo,S,P,H,Er,I,C (a degree in Inorganic Chemistry occasionally comes in handy). 35ac is an anagram - CAUTION,THREAT turning into AUTHENTICATOR, and 3D is HORSE,CHESTNUT. Thanks for the three starter clues, Emkay, we're off!

I'd like to stay I stuck with the game plan of filling in the normal entry clues, but since I got the first three I looked at, I decided to barge in and solve as many as I could, and when there were jumbles, write the letters on the side of the grid and eliminate checking letters. The clues were a mix of very tricky and pretty easy - here's my favorites...

6A - DR(ONG)OS(s) - cute little bird, and Australian term of insult
18A - ELD,EST
20A - CLEANER (anagram of LAWRENCE-W)
5D - ORRA - hidden reversed in wheelbARROw
23D - EELS - every fourth letter is a new one for me
31D (deva)STATE - the sort of clue I used to miss a lot, taking a small word away from a long word

After two sessions of solving, I had a pretty decent-looking grid, but still a lot of blanks across that centre, it looked like -O---H-E-R-. Putting that into Word Wizards (I relied a lot on Word Wizards for this one), suggested HOORAH HENRY, and this dropping was too big for a penny - the brick dropped. Are the perimeters Henrys? Look a the first one... FOR,D. We're on to something... if they're Henry's, that (9,two words) would be THE EIGHTH... E in HE in TIGHT,H (nice wordplay, Emkay). Further confirmation, anagram of virgin gives me IRVING.

I wrote down all the Henrys I knew... Clay, Matisse, Thoreau, Purcell, Mancini and tried to retrofit them into the perimeter clues. There's MANCI,NI, and PUR(e)CELL (and places to put them). A wikipedia and google search of Henrys gave me TH(I)E,R,RY as a soccer-playing Henry. That left me with two 4-letter Henry's to find. I thought the mild cheese one was C(LA)Y, but a google search of Cyprus cheese turned up HALLOUMI, and that Henry Hall was a 17th century poet. Finally putting in HENRY -O-D suggested Henry Wood (concert leader), so I presume the bird is a woodchuck without the chuck or something like that.

This was a lot of fun to solve! The Henrys were fun, and trickily clued, and I enjoyed doing the research to finish this off. There was a real sense of playfulness that resonated with me here. And I managed to get the theme and the answer pretty readily after some slogging.

Victory to George! Current tally - George 22, Listener 18. Current streak, George 2.

Finding Henry Theirry reminded me of an hysterical track by Cassetteboy on their most recent CD, "Carry On Breathing". Warning - while this is technically safe for work, you may not want to play it with sensitive ears present.



Until next week - comments welcome!