EV1714
Shambles by Curmudgeon
Setter’s Blog
Corrected misprints give SOMEONE HAD BLUNDERED; THE SIX HUNDRED are shown in THE VALLEY OF DEATH as described by Alfred Lord TENNYSON in The Charge of the Light Brigade.
Setter’s Blog: Shambles by Curmudgeon
I wonder what solvers anticipated when they read the title ‘Shambles’. It was the inspiration of the test-solver who felt that other titles like ‘Half a League’ or ‘Do and Die’ were rather obvious give-aways as we are all so familiar with Alfred Lord Tennyson’s words about the Charge of the Light Brigade:
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs but to do and die …
SOMEONE HAD BLUNDERED was offered to solvers by the corrected misprints – a mere nineteen to find in more than twice as many clues, so relatively easy to do. I learned early on in my compiling days that to attempt to produce a message using misprints in every cue was a near impossibility – at least if I wished the clues to give a reasonable surface sense both in the misprinted version and the corrected one. That is one of the pleasurable moments of compiling – when it works.
‘Shambles’? Well, it was a shambles and what a dreadful sacrifice of human life that Tennyson was commemorating and the word was familiar in that the Shambles exist in the little North Yorkshire town of Settle, near my home but what does Chambers tell us?
shamble2 /shamˈbl/
noun
ORIGIN: OE scamel (Ger Schemel) stool, from LL scamellum, dimin of scamnum a bench
shamˈbles singular noun
shambolˈic adjective
It was indeed a ‘slaughterhouse’ and a mess and muddle/ a place of carnage, wasn’t it?
When I saw that THE SIX HUNDRED could descend into a symmetrical VALLEY OF DEATH with no way out (except for 20 or so of them) in my grid, the theme was irresistible and a pleasure to set, even with such a gruesome theme. I hope solvers had some pleasure in filling that grid and recalling the poem.
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A full review of this puzzle can be seen over on fifteensquared.