The preamble reads:
Clues are listed in alphabetical order of their solutions and should be
inserted into the grid wherever they fit.
Solvers must complete the barred off cells to reveal an alternative
title to the puzzle. One answer is in
Collins.
 |
| Solution Grid to Sixes and Sevens II |
SALMAGUNDI (n. a medley, miscellany) is the
alternative title to the phrase “(at) sixes and sevens” (in disorder).
This is a follow-up puzzle to SIXES AND SEVENS
published in the Crossword No. 473 (September 2017)
Some of your comments
“Prefer ’I’ to ‘Y’ in second empty cell, but either OK, I
hope.”
“Clue e should have Italian woman, not Frenchwoman?
French version is ARIANNE, but NNE is not ‘woman backing up’, although ‘NNA’
is.”
“Took a bit of doing but I enjoyed it.
Not sure about
ARIANNE — French; Arianna — but this one fits the clues — ARIA with ANNE
backing up, but Italian not French.
Rellish and
Stimies kept me struggling!
“I thought I was going to find it tricky to fit the words
together, but I was lucky to try the two interlocking K-words first and it was
straightforward thereafter.
An enjoyable
challenge — many thanks.”
“Confused by ‘e’. Wordplay indicates ARIANNA but definition
indicates ARIANNE?”
“KGOTLAS turned out to be the key.”
“I’m at 6s and 7s with this one!
Managed a good
half of the clues and the listing in alphabetical order helped considerably.
Too difficult for
me to put answers on grid, and not enough answers to help decide where to but
them.”
“Took a while to get started, but once I realised there was
only one Z and only one word ending in K the bottom left fell into place.
Some difficult
cold solving but a pleasing challenge.”
“Very enjoyable.”
“An enjoyable challenge. We found it difficult to do a
‘carte blanche’ without a couple of longer words to get started. having failed
to guess the alternative title, we relied on trial and error, eventually
starting with two of the ‘K’ words. The clues were hard to solve but
well-crafted.”
“Clue e requires ARIANNA, but she is Italian, not
French.
Clue r:
SORA is surely heading WEST, not East.
I think the use
of Christian names (four here) is a cop-out by the setter.”
“Demanding, needing to solve more clues than usual with a
carte blanche to start grid entries, given the binary choice of word lengths,
but enjoyable.”
“Puzzled about clue to ‘e’, which we can only construe as
SONG = ARIA followed by NNA (ANN = WOMAN reversed), but Chambers confirms
our view that ARIANNA is an Italian woman, the French being ARIANE or ARIANNE.
Maybe we’re missing something.”
“A difficult jig-saw crossword in which most of the pieces
have to be found before it can be put together.
“Solved all but two clues but still couldn’t place the
solutions in the grid!”
“I always find this sort of puzzle a challenge with a lot
of ‘cold’ solving. Even with a lot of answers, fitting them required several
attempts. I was pleased to find the diagonal word!”
“I love the word EUOUAES — not only handy for crosswords
but particularly had for Scrabble when holding a poor rack of letters.”
“I enjoy these alphabetical and numberless jigsaw puzzles.
This one was not too difficult.”
“Not as hard as I feared. After solving about 90% of the
clues it seemed a decent bet that the Z in KRANTZ would be unchecked. That
greatly reduced the possibilities for filling the grid, and everything fell
into place quite quickly.
As usual with
Eclogue, clues are carefully crafted. My only doubt concerns e. The
wordplay seems to indicate ARIA +~ ANN<, but Chambers suggest that
ARIANNA is the Italian form of the name.”
“It is somewhat unsatisfactory the one of the two letters
to be deduced is the one letter for which Chambers offers an alternative
spelling: SALMAGUNDI or SALMAGUNDY. I can’t find anything in the puzzle that
indicates that one of this is right and the other wrong.
r: Isn’t
the rail heading west?
gg: Since
THECLA is a genus I think ‘we’ would be better than ‘I’ in the clue.”
“Query clue e: If song = ARIA then surely woman
backing is ANN but ‘ARIANNA’ is Italian — not French. Or is it ‘song backing’ =
AIR in ANNE?
Why no indication
re proper names (four answers) not is last two Chambers?”
“I found this very enjoyable and reasonably quick, as I was
lucky to be able to start filling the grid after a relatively small number of
answers. I was wondering if there was any significance in the two clues both
labelled dd, but decided it was just another ‘oops’, not flagged up,
Clue labels were not needed anyway! I was also perplexed by two ambiguities: 1
SALMAGUND-I or –Y? There seems to indication here; 2 ARIANN-E or –A? The
wordplay suggests –A but the Frenchwoman is –E.
Many thanks.”
“I cannot see any reason to choose one spelling of
salmagundi over the other.”
“Delighted to have finished but it was a bit of a grind.
Perhaps I put off the moment of ‘grid-filling by trial and error’ for too long,
because it fell into place quite easily when I started even though several of
the 7-letter answers were unfathomed at the stage.
Quite a few
uncertainties remain (e, r, x, dd).
I hope all
potential prize-winners are checked to ensure they didn’t put ‘uncork’ for ii —
I only spotted that at a late stage!”
“Have got this wrong? I can’t find anything to make sense
that crosses the blank squares.”
“Fit the sevens in where they cross, the sixes then jump
into place. (Having solve them all first…)
The choice of
letter in the lower barred-off cell was a nuisance.
A IInd triumph of
construction.”
“A real challenge! Most enjoyable and rewarding but feel
‘salmagundi’ is a bit of a loose connection.”
“Needed around 90% cold solving before starting to fill the
grid, so rather laborious.”
“This type of puzzle always requires a lot of cold solving
(much as I noted in September last year!). It helped that there was only a
minority of 7-letter answers, and eventually decided that there was only one
place I’d have put KGTOLAS — and turned out to be right!”
“Entering the solutions was far more difficult than solving
the clues, We were grateful for the Xs and Ks.”
“I needed a lot of entries before I could start filling the
grid. Very much a game of two halves.
Who’s ARIANNA?”
