EV1692
Anonymous by Ifor
Setter’s Blog
INNOMINATE TARN
(Alfred) WAINWRIGHT, whose ashes were scattered around INNOMINATE TARN to be dispersed by visitors, is removed from around TARN, with letters from his name being entered in ten across clues.
Setter’s blog:
This puzzle owes its inception to a hillwalking friend who told me the rather poignant story of Wainwright and his ashes. Exploration of word lengths led me to the idea of doubling the TARN letters so that Wainwright could circumscribe the cells. Fortuitously Innominate Tarn is fairly central in the national park, allowing this to be done; it’s a while since I’ve produced a cartographic grid. Since Wainwright features twice (once in the grid and once as the scattered letters) it seemed a good compromise between fairness and challenge for one to be en clair and the other jumbled. Grid construction was fairly straightforward, starting from TARNISHED as the only way of achieving the real-word criterion.
Adding letters to clues is intrinsically unfair – almost any sentence will contain at least one adaptable word – unless, as here, they’re discernible from elsewhere. At any rate, it seems not to have caused any problems. My thanks are due to the editor, who was instrumental in shifting the focus of the theme and so the preamble towards the removal of the ashes by visitors rather than the initial scattering.
As a solver I find one of the pleasures of themed puzzles is that of learning something new. It was good to see that others feel the same.
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A full review of this puzzle can be seen over on fifteensquared.