Because we're... going to the blacksmith and we're... gonna get married

And away we go with another Homer Listener. Last year's was really impressive, took me forever, but I felt really good about finishing it. The first thing that hit me about this one was the preamble. There's a few unchecked squares that would need two letters. Some need to be deleted and some need to be moved (presumably to that juicy-looking unnumbered across space two lines about that curious dotted line.

Good news is that we have grid entries so it's not going to be completely up to me to determine where these doubly-occupied squares go. So let's get a-solvin!

There's a lot of clues with short answers, which often trip me up, so care is needed. Of course the first word in was D'OH at 17, but the real start in filling in the grid came at 19 across (hidden OSSA) which crossed OHMMETERS (anagram of SOME,TMMER - nice clue), RIDE SHOTGUN (TO HIRED GUNS)*, and SHERPA, meaning the rest of HOTGUN went in. And we were off on filling in the grid, looking for places to put the double letters.

It probably makes the scanned version unreadable, but I put all the possibilities in some places to try to help me get crossing letters... so for example, I had

P,I/L,L/O,O/W at 1, R/I,I/D,D/E at 10 down, S.H/E,E/R/P,A at 3... that helped in spotting ODORATE at 13 and confirm that the doubly-occupied squares are together.

With the letters I had at this point, I entered the unnumbered line into Word Wizards which suggested TELL A SECRET and TELL THE TIME. Neither of which seemed to mean anything.

AHA! Penny drop moment #1. There's nice rows of unchecked cells in the second row, third row, second row from the bottom and third row from the bottom (but it doesn't look like the last set is doubly occupied). Add that to 21 and 23 across, each of which has to have two double letters in each of the unchecked squares.

First thing I spotted was in the second row from the bottom. Starting from 20 down, I had

E/E, N/L, G/O, ?, E/A, R/N, ?. So ENGLAND is one of them. ENGLAND sounds like something familiar to be left behind. So what's left over? ELO?ER?. ELOPERS!

Someone is eloping from England, and I have to the letters from ELOPERS in that line (and I scour Chambers to get those last two entries as TRIPLE and PUDSY). TELL?OPERS. Huh?

How about these other doubles.

Second row... I/L, I/R, C/E, H/E, N/S, ?, R/E - LICENCE or LICENSE... damn... don't you need a licence (or license) even if you elope?

Google time - since ENGLAND is below that dotted line, they're probably going north to elope, which means Scotland. Googling "Elope to scotland" throws up this page. GRETNA GREEN!!! Homer, you're going to drive up the sales of green highlighters! And there's GRET?A just above the border. Back to Chambers and 26 (after a lot of picking through) is KNEIPE, and TELLKOPERS is really TOLLKEEPERS. The Gretna Green page was invaluable, because it had BANNS, which took care of the cells at 21 and 23 across. More picking through the S section of Chambers gave SCOTOMIA for 5 down. But there's one bit left...

That third row...

?, R/C, B/O, M/E, S/A, R/T. Huh? Nothing matches from these pages - although it turns out the blacksmiths do the weddings, so if you don't need a church you don't need a PRIEST! So BOWMAN which I had for 14 isn't right... more Chambersing and there's GIGMAN (and of "course" 18 across is GOLF, nitwit), leaving 6 to be UROPODS. Highlight GRETNA in green (yellowy-green, closest I could get), and we are DONE!!!

In a similar fashion to Carte Blanche, I learned a lot completing this. I don't think everything that is left is a real word, but I liked finding the bits and pieces. And victory to George!

2009 tally: George 3, Listener 0. Current streak, George 3.

I wasn't feeling musically inspired this week, but a regular reader sent me a site of deliciously twisted animations - here's my favorite (pity it won't embed). Comments welcome as always, see you next week!