Listener 4205 Murder Mystery 2 by Gos

[Ruthrobin]

Just two hours to fill this grid but then we had some grid staring to complete the endgame. Still, it was good to have a set of simple clues and an easy romp for a change after some we have seen this summer.

[Scree]

Puzzled. I have 27D and 39A left to do. I have all available letters for 39A and I'm sure all the letters from down answers are correct, but Quinapalus shows no matching words.

Even if the answer is jumbled, the preamble says it will make a new word, so what's going on?

And here's a tale about Talking Scouse, illustrating the dangers of set ideas.

When I got as far as the groups of 3 consecutive letters and J not featuring, I assumed all paired unclued answers would lead to groups of 3. I was visiting my mum in sunny Yorkshire, and she even suggested that 'German car' would give VW but I was having none of it. I chose 'company car' and 'German airline'.

It all made sense - the preamble said there was a slight deviation, so I reasoned that the setter couldn't find QRS and TUV and substituted QRT and SUV. Had I been more rigorous I'd have spotted that qr and qt are the abbreviations for quarter and quart, but I guessed that QRT existed somewhere. And SUV is some kind of car (though a voice in my head warned that a company car wasn't necessarily an SUV).

I'd decided that w was the missing letter to find in the grid - and eventually I found it, as the UU in equus. Here's the masterstroke - I reasoned that 'youse' is a Scouse expression, thus explaining the title.

Talking Scouse - tick (U's = youse)

W - tick (double U)

And a wrong answer!

What's most galling is that I KNEW KLM was a Dutch airline, but my fixed idea made me accept it as German (in my defence I would argue that 'airline company' is a lousy pairing; most of us just say 'airline'.

Anyhow - can anyone offer a gentle nudge to solving 39A without giving too much away?

[perseverer]

The answer required is not in Quinapalus - remember it is not based on Chambers. You might try Chambers Word Wizard which again does not use the BRB either, but you never know...

http://www.chambers.co.uk/word-wizard.php

[Scree]

Thanks Perseverer

Still not sure that I'm going to find the nickname or title, let alone crack 27D!

[perseverer]

Scree - if you want contact me perseverer49(at)yahoo(dot)co(dot)uk
for a further nudge