Appearing in the May 2001 issue of Crossword Club, the preamble states: "Solvers should wave goodbye to a single letter in all but two clues prior to solving. When read in clue order these letters provide an instruction which solvers must complete."
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| Waves |
Extraneous
characters in clues provide “SHADE TWO SINUSOIDAL PATHS OF ISS, MODULE and
FIRM.
Solvers are
therefore required to highlight SPACE STATION, DRAGON and SPACEX to illustrate possible
orbits as they would appear on a flat surface.
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| International Space Station |
Solver Feedback
"Understanding the instruction and finding finding the waves was more difficult than solving the crossword!"
"Really brilliant puzzle, but a nightmare to construct and solve!"
"These single-entry extras can be very annoying, and sometimess ambiguous, e.g. in clue 12 ac the clue works equally well if R or D is removed. I enjoyed solving the clues none the less, and saw that two sine waves were needed, though I couldn't make sense of the message after that. A certain amount of grid-staring ensued, then I saw the (light) waves! Very neat. Many thanks."
"Well, that was different and certainly new to me. I didn't even recognise the abbreviation ISS and was trying to find an issue! That made it all the more satisfying when the elusive coin finally dropped. Many thanks, Eclogue."
"Good puzzle. Hard to guess the instruction but rewarding once solved. Not sure about 23A and 12A suggests wave goodbye to R not D."
"Very clever use of theme.
I don't think 23ac is clue to give NGO ... is it?
Are the checkers giving their blessing to clues like 5dn now? We had another one last time."
"The clue to 23 across didn't quite work as the strict answer would have been GNONI.
Otherwise, very clever."
"I found the most challenging part of this puzzle was deciphering the instruction - an unfamiliar long word and an unfamiliar acronym.
But worth it in the end."
"A challenging puzzle with enjoyable clues that made me laugh as the penny dropped."
"A difficult crossword.
How cleverly Eclogue has included his two 'lines' to be shaded."
"I'm so glad Chambers gives ISS!
I'm also glad that my wife has a scientific bent and so could explain the sinusoidal paths to me.
I felt I'd done enough just solving the difficult clues, but going the extra mile was very rewarding.
A real and enjoyable challenge."
"Clue 23ac seems to give GNONI, not NGONI."
"A lot of easy clues, but an unfamiliar theme for me."
"Where a letter has to be removed from the clue I prefer a real word to be left that clues the answer or part of it rather than a non-word whose letters go straight into the answer (as in 16D and elsewhere).
Does 23A clue the letters in the required order? And can 'page' be defined by 'message' (ID)?
I groaned when I saw Chambers' unenlightening definition of sinusoid, but with the help of the title it wasn't difficult to find the wavy path."
"Largely a case of solving anagrams.
The extra letter is 12 is surely R, not the D of GUARD."
"As always with Eclogue, a novel theme, neatly addressed with a pleasing pay-off.
Thanks!"
"Tracing the paths is beyond me. I expect I knew about sinusoids when I did A level maths, but that was more than 50 years ago. I have had to make room in my head for a lot of other stuff since then. The internet would probably help but at present I need to book a appointment at the library to get access."
"Very satisfying. The clues were well-constructed (although we couldn't quite understand the wordplay for 23Ac), and there was a nice PDM without too much grid-staring. Sinusoidal paths were new to us."
"I did enjoy this crossword, found it easier than crossword 2, but unfortunately cannot figure out the construction. Looking forward to the correct solution!"
"The word sinusoidal came as a bit of shock! Off to Google again."
"23 Across - GNONI or GONNI, not NGONI?"
"Although I've completed the puzzle, I cannot find the two sinusoidal paths.
Frustrating!"
"One of those puzzles that teaches you something new. Couldn't have got there without the Internet though. Clever construction to achieve two parallel curves."
"A nice grid, and clues which I found mostly simple."
"Beautifully intricate. I had solved all clues before I had any idea what completing the challenge would involve. I did then see 'Space Station' quite quickly but was half expecting the waves to intersect each other so could not see how the 'DRAGON' which I saw going upwards could continue or help. It took a sharper-eyed daughter and a better-informed son-in-law on a fortuitous birthday visit to point out that the dragon's tail went down from the G as well as up and that the parallel wave thus formed was a thing. Curiously, although the latter came up as soon as I looked for
it, it was not revealed by any searches involving the I.S.S. itself.
Pedantically I wonder whether a U-is really a trap 'for' water- is it not a trap for more undesirable substances since water flows through it?"
"I found SPACEX in the SE, but only SPACE in the NW. That could be continues with ST and perhaps USA but can't find any justification for that. SP ACEX is not strictly speaking a 'module' firm.
11a. 'Northern' appears superfluous.
23a. Wordplay seems to give GNONI or GONNI.
2dn. 'Digging' as anagrind?
14dn. En = space, as decried by the clue-setting judge. Soul= creature!"
Eclogue write
Waves was perhaps unsurprisingly conceived around the time of the first successful SpaceX Dragon mission to the International Space Station and was pleasingly published around the time of the second. The creation of sinusoidal paths to depict orbits on a flat surface was too good an opportunity to miss, and even if solvers weren't glued to the NASA online streams for this mission, similar depictions have occurred frequently in a great many space-themed movies wherever some sort of large scale map adorns the main backdrop of a Mission Control setting.
Apologies for the erroneous construct for NGONI (which, as the notes show, was supposed to be NO(N)G in IN, all reversed, but something
got lost in the various iterations. We believe the message deals with the 12a ambiguity, as SHARE TWO ... wouldn't lead to an actionable instruction. We do however generally agree with the sentiment expressed by the solver concerned about the word used in 5d (although the instance last month, was arguably worse) and will endeavour to avoid such in future. Hopefully all other queries are resolved by the accompanying notes.
As part of the novelty of the SpaceX mission is a certain amount of "recycling", Eclogue may feel similarly inspired in this direction in the future. As they say, watch this 'space' ...
Many thanks and regards.
