Sequence 5

This puzzle appeared in the May 2019 edition of 1 Across magazine as Crossword No 1902.

Sequence 5 by Eclogue

The preamble: 

Unclued lights provide the names of the ten most recent holders of an office to be deduced, two in combination, one performing double duty.

Solution

Explanation:
The unclued lights are the surnames of the ten most recent Masters of the Kings / Queens Music, starting from George Frederick ANDERSON and coming up to date with Judith WEIR.  DAVIES ‘performs’ double duty for Sir Walford DAVIES and Sir Peter MAXWELL DAVIES (the two entries used in combination).

Some solver feedback

Enjoyment

7 IIIII

8 III

8.4 I

8.5 I

9 III 

Favourite

TALLMEN: Last one finished: I didn’t know about the loaded dice. 

PARKI

DEBRA: It was neat and I learnt something new. Bet Hamish knew the answer! 

BRAILLE

SHISHKEBAB II Well constructed and required a bit of thought

DRYSHOD - sounds so weird!

LAYBY - LIKED THE CONTRUCTION

MOLTO - CLEVER DISGUISE of ’second’. Simple, neat and effective. 

ERRS Nice surface

HERO’ - it had me puzzled for ages until I saw the anagram of ‘CLUES’ - very clever.

This required looking up the list of MOQM. Couldn’t find a place for CUSINS; originally put down DAVIES as a second DAVIES. Theme easy once I had SWOB and SYRIA. 

As usual I enjoyed an Eclogue puzzle. It took a while to find the MoQM, which in itself was fun. Some very neat clues. 

Fine with the help of Google once I’d worked out what the office was!

Quite satisfying, though I’m not really into music. As so often nowadays, I don’t understand the title. Doubtless it’s my lack of musical knowledge. [No, just ’sequence x’…!] A lot of well hidden clues. Adult, Ingmar. They always tend to fool me! 

Educational! We had some trouble solving as our solutions seem to fit the definitions but sometimes we couldn’t understand the wordplay. 

Pretty straightforward but informative. Elgar was the giveaway that we were looking for composers so it was quite easy to track the others down

once this was known.