Posted by nmsindy on June 15th, 2007
This was a real fun puzzle, I thought.
Solving time: 3 hrs 45 mins
The preamble said (with words in capitals the unclued answers that appeared in the grid). 36 (SEXIST) 18 (LANGUAGE) is not tolerated here, so 7 (INAPPROPRIATE) forms of 30 (ADDRESS) are removed from seven answers, and two others are also changed. Corrected misprints in definitions to fourteen answers spell out a non-36(SEXIST) alternative to what could be described as nonsense.
The seven forms of address that were removed, all leaving real words in the grid, were:
ACROSS 9 Si(DEAR)ms DOWN 1 Alistair (DARLING) 3 (DUCKS)hove 8 (CHUCK) wagon 32 p (LUV) ious 37 strum(PET) 41 w (HINNY) ing
The fourteen clues with misprints (with the correct letter shown in capitals) were : ACROSS 13 joHn 21 rOd 24 Worth 42 Sea 44 waY 48 mOral DOWN 12 pUdding 15 Rope 17 Proper 22 alloA 25 poRt 29 posE 35 oNe 39 cuT . This led to the hilarious, laugh-out-loud, had to tell everyone, HOW’S YOUR PARENT. This means (in its original form), among other things, NONSENSE (confirmed in dict)
Finally 27 Across imMANation became imPERSONation and 26 Down unMAN became unPERSON – again all real words, completing a great puzzle.