This Inquisitor puzzle appeared under the pseudonym Plumrot, very much a one-off. The reason for this was that I had a Phi puzzle on the same day in The Listener, using the same theme (although presented in a wildly different way as a semi-asymmetrical carte blanche). The fact that the centenary of the birth of Mervyn Peake, one of my favourite writers, fell on a Saturday (9 July 2011) was too good to miss, and Peake provided a number of thematic options. So I leant on both sets of editors, and decided that one consequence would be to use a different pseudonym in one puzzle. Plumrot is a very veiled reference to Peake’s character Dr. Prunesquallor. I was able to trim the preamble because Chambers added MWAH in the period since the 2008 edition.
I’d done a Peake puzzle before, in 1990 for the Crossword Club, based on some implausible anagrams of the titles of his most famous trilogy. I had managed to note that if you changed the S of Gormenghast to a U, the result was an anagram of Grangemouth (surely something everyone notes from time to time…). Titus Groan itself anagrammed to ‘outstaring’, a perfectly good Chambers word, but I had the changed S in my mind now. Changing the S of the third book, Titus Alone, to an X, of all things, gave me anagram of ‘exultation’ (but you knew that, naturally). So all I needed to do was change the S of Titus Groan to something…and it was a lovely friendly set of letters…-ING and -ATION just begging to be used…and…and I ended up in the OED with OUT-TRADING, which at least was a credible use of the prefix. These days I can plug into Sympathy and fall over ‘obturating’ with scarcely a blink, of course. But DUX made a better title.
This puzzle, on the other hand, uses the 11-letter pairing of Mervyn Peake and Gormenghast (with a shared central letter) alongside the 10-letter – nay, (5,5), even – conjunction of the other two books. So you have the central row and column completely unchecked. The entry at 19 down is strangely pleasing.
Added letters in Across clues gave TITUS ALONE. Letters dropped from Down entries gave TITUS GROAN. GORMENGHAST reads diagonally NE to SW, and MERVYN PEAKE NW to SE.
ACROSS
1 MWAH; hawm (rev.)
5 SHYING; h y in sing; starTing
10 EELFARE; E elf a re; IMP
11 ALOO; aloo(f)
12 CERTIORARI; I or in anag. + I; carTer
13 VROOMING; v room in G; sUite
14 NAGOYA; ago in anag.
16 EARTH; hidden; Soil
21 EKING; kin in eg(o)
22 UPCURL; U + cur in Pl; CAD
24 WASHABLE; AB in anag; saLt
26 LAMASERAIS; anag; nOun
27 ESME; m in e,s,e; moNth
28 GODLIKE; go ‘d + K in lie
29 TETRAD; hidden; kitE
30 ETHE; e-the
DOWN
1 MECONA(T)E; econ a in me
2 WEEP; we E P
3 ALRIGH(T); rig in a lh
4 DAIRY; (m)yriad (rev.)
6 HEROES; her o(n)es
7 YA(RR)AMAN; a in anag.
8 (A)NOINTER; no inter
9 GOI(N)G; 0 in gig
15 ALKAL(I)SE; a L + anag.
17 HOLY SEE; s in ye in hole
18 INH(U)MER; in + initial letters
19 AGA (S)AGA; aga x 2
20 Y(O)U WAIT; y (K)uwait
23 PLED(G)E; led in P E
24 WHET; w + anag.
25 SIKH; K in his (rev.)
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