Franc is back! The setter of the first crossword I made a blog for here in the battle. And a round grid, which used to terrify me, but I've had a bit more luck on them this year, with good efforts on Babes and Squaring the Circle, but made a real mess out of Past Times.
Extra words in clues, first letters giving names. Jumbles, inwards, outwards, a name in the middle ring (an inventor with 12 letters - Thomas Edison came to mind). Second ring has others on the bill - is it an inventor who is on money? Ernest Rutherford is on New Zealand money, but he's a scientist, not an inventor. Let's try some clues.
The "wordplay only" clues in the second ring gave the game away pretty quickly... 2 is C,LOW,N, 6 is L(ION)S, and 3 is FIREATER (FIR,TREE,A)*,R. So it's something to do with a circus or a sideshow. Barnum/Bailey/Ringling? Let's try the radial clues.
I made a long slow slog of these clues...
I could often get two or three in each set, but not the fourth - finally I saw 33-36 (TALENT, S(LATE)R, JE(ST)ER, P(UR)EST and although all four have an S and a T, there wasn't two with the S at the start or the end, so I confidently had one letter entered in the grid, a T
Similarly, from 9-12, I had CH,ORAL, L(A,H)ORE, and BORE,AL - so there has to be an L in the center ring.
from 13-16 I had ESCHAR, CHEATS (yay, anagrams!) and INFECT (insect with F for S), so it had to be an E or a C.
From 5-8 I had SAMSHU, HAUL(M)S, and UL,TR,AS which meant either a U or an S...
Hmmm.... (U,S),L,(E,C).....T. Could the first name be JULES (The only one I knew from 1-4 at the time was SWARAJ, and it was very tempting to have J be the common letters).
Googling "circus" and "jules" gave JULES LEOTARD, who made his debut at the Napoleon Circus in Paris, and from the words I knew, I could fit JULES LEOTARD in the middle circle.
Now for the funny part - I had spent days agonizing over clues one at a time... I can't recall a puzzle I've spent longer to crack (I know this is being naughty, but there's one upcoming one that is taking a similar amount of time). I was so excited at seeing that Jules fit that I leapt out of the chair awkwardly and pinched something in my back and was in pain for hours.
Having seen the theme, it was piecing through the rest of the words to the finish. The exrta words kind of helped - I didn't know many of the last 8 answers straight away, but seeing HOUDINI as a possibility helped.
Victory to George! And I've got my nose in front again. Current tally: George 23, Listener 22. Current streak, George 2.
My DVD of this is broken, alas... when I think circuses, I think of the Marx Brothers film "At The Circus". Here's Groucho singing "Lydia The Tattooed Lady"
And here's me as a part of a circus sideshow from a burlesque show last St. Patrick's Day
See you for some numerology next week!
1 comment:
Well done - that one was a lot of fun.
Although, where would we be without Wikipedia these days!
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