What the Dickens – Solutions, Annotations & Results

Stats -We had 40 submissions for this puzzle, which is a new record for this season. Of those who submitted, 31 got the full grid score of 30. A number of people managed to answer at least one if not both the bonus questions asked as well..

Here’s the Solution grid

The following questions were asked at the end of the puzzle..

1. 1. Name the character who owned Satis House
   2. Which novel made this puzzle’s 3D famous?

The correct answers to these were (1) Miss Havisham and (2) A Christmas Carol. Only six people who attempted got Qn 2 wrong. Incorrect answers included “Bleak House”, “Pickwick Papers”, “Great Expectations” and “A Christmas Story”.

A few people thought that Satis House was owned by Miss Havisham’s adopted daughter Estella. A few others answered “Richard Watts” – having missed the fact that the question was “Name the character”. A quick reference to Wikipedia reveals this “Satis House is a fictional estate in the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations. The name Satis House comes from the Latin satis for ‘enough’, and is the name of a real mansion in Rochester, Kent, near where Dickens lived. It gained its name from a comment by Queen Elizabeth I who stayed there as a guest of the owner, Richard Watts. As she left, Watts asked his queen if she had been comfortable during her stay. Offhandedly, she replied: “Satis”.^[1]

Here are the Annotations.

Across:

1 Charge around a piece of land, say like Dickens’ cheerful miniature painter (2,6) L(ACRE)EVY
5 Awkward state…endless nausea, in a mess…bit embarrassing (6) NAUSE(-A)*
10 Sound tests in a second (5) HP TRIES
11 Bawdy brother-in-law from New Delhi starts to cheat on debts (9) SALA+C+IOUS
12 A voice quality, by the sound of it pointed to Yom Kippur theme? (9) A TONE+HP MEANT
13 Decorate blue-red ship (5) RED* SS
14 Legal enactments protect lead provider (6) T
15 Twist died! OMG, a minor deity! (7) DIEDOMG*
18 Obstacles faced alongside this timid chap from Bleak House (7) SNAGS BY
20 Regret Satis Houses’ rejection of a winery employee, perhaps (6) Rev T
22 From the beginning, Esther’s modestly bashful, eerily resembling dying coal (5) Acrostic
24 Little woman’s torrid? Oddly, she is Dickens’ most selfless character (3,6) AMY+TORRID*
25 An evening with the Marquis is all that Gaspard wanted? (3,3,3) Punny CD – EVEN ing – TIT FOR TAT
26 Initial letters from Fagin, Oliver lost in old manuscript (5) Acrostic
27 A sound player, Steerforth’s half out..sadly gets zero (6) STEER-FORTH*+O
28 Drown one sister on a rendezvous (8) I NUN DATE

Down:

1 Lady Havisham initially, overwhelms alien criminal causing death (6) L (ET AL) H
2 Clone this sausage from melted plain chocolate (9) CA – (PLAIN CHOCOLATE-CLONE)*
3 Geezer, once sober became a host to many a ghost? (8,7) GEEZERONCESOBER*
4 Guts one craves to crush (7) I+CRAVES*
6 Corrupt FBI found income from miser, essentially the Golden Dustman? (9,6) FBIFOUNDINCOME+S*
7 Desolate, having lost heart, Allen desperately nurses some Ouzo (5) ALLEN-L*<<O
8 European, with leg on either side, loses heart for small part of Manhattan (4,4) E+ASRTIDE-R+S
9 Journalist’s dead within, but in heaven (6) ED<<LATE
16 Lure a girl to become a member of the resistance (9) LUREAGIRL*
17 Estella’s best ostrich swallowed a carcinogen? (8) T
19 Yes! Old saint gets young and bubbly (6) YEA+ST+Y
20 Go into building in an attempt to deceive someone (3,2,2) TRY + INTO*
21 Pet Mark (6) DD
23 Nearly ram an isolated hill (5) BUTTE(-R)

Here is the scorecard (sorted by score and then in the order of submissions received)

Congrats to Kishore , who was the first one to submit an all correct entry and to all others who maxed the score as well.

16 out of 40 people rated the puzzle as “Excellent” and 21 rated it “Good”. All 30 clues in the grid got picked atleast once in the top 3 favorites voted by the solvers. The clue for “Salacious” was picked by 14 out of 40 solvers, as one of the favorites. Inundate, Chipolata and Guerrilla each got 10 votes or more.

Did you enjoy the puzzle? Do you have any feedback for us or for the setter. Do comment in the blog and let us know.

(NOTE: ERRATA – There was a transcription error that affected some of the data in the previous score card table that accompanied the post. It was has been identified and amended now. The final ranking had not been impacted. Thanks to SSv Avtaar for bringing this to our notice and apologies for the error.)