Listener 4085: If I've Told You Once... by Ploy

[midazolam]

Ploy gave us a relatively straightforward but interesting grid with "Signal Boxes" and it is the same this week. In fact there is more in the grid than needs to be highlighted. A very impressive grid construction once again, but the cluing is rather easy for listener standards. For those struggling with the extra letters (as I did) they are not actually necessary (although act as confirmation) as all the clashes can be resolved unambiguously.

Thanks Ploy

[x_word_fan]

Amazing how writing a post sorts it out. Never met anyone called that!

[Cruncher]

I didn't quite get this one. It works ok but I felt the two-word phrase was a slightly cumbersome means to obtain the final grid. I'm looking to see if there is a connection between this phrase and the quotation that's alluded to. There's one literary article that talks about word shifts and I guess there is the Shakespearian quote that the author is making reference to - am I going too deep?

[Mysterons]

I think you are probably right, shades of 'What's in a name?' here. Regarding the words containing hidden letter pairs, I'm not sure it's correct to say that two of them work as anagrinds before as well as after the letter-pairs are removed - they certainly wouldn't pass muster in an Azed competition clue.

I must agree with qwerty99 on the continuing usefulness of Latin some 33 years since I took the O-Level. It certainly is still studied in state schools, in fact I was delighted to learn from my son that Caecilius, Quintus, Grumio and Cerberus are all still going strong !

[qwerty99]

Ah, Mysterons, another veteran of the Cambridge Course! It brings back fond memories. Are you aware of the CUP course for younger children - Minimus? If you are not, have a look at the website. It is quite briliant. And the beauty of it is that any good teacher with little a Latin, or almost none, would be able to teach it. It should be part of the National Curriculum!

I must defend my comment on the anagram indicators still working as such after the removal of the letter pairs I still think they do work, albeit a little loosely. But I think I have come across looser ones, even in Azed!

[Mysterons]

I hadn't heard of Minimus, and shall certainly take a look - it might be something my youngest would be interested in, as they don't seem to teach it at the secondary school she is hoping to go to. Thanks for the info !

I agree that some of Azed's own clues can be quite loose, but he does tend to be a lot stricter with anagrinds and the like when judging competition clues. I think 'no---ic" would be OK as an anagrind, but certainly not "no---". Similarly, "in a mi---" doesn't give the right sense for an anagrind.

[nigel2]

Everything understood apart from the wordplay for 27d. How does one resolve the ambiguity over the final letter?

[Mysterons]

It's all down to the wordplay, nigel. You need to find a 6-letter word for "group of Indian states", and then change the first letter from ? to ? (the two ? given by the last and third last words of the clue)

[nigel2]

Have now found it, thanks.