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Thanks ginge and djawhufc

Good point re 'Some...' - a useful riposte if we turn out to be wrong...

I don't think it matters that one abbreviated name is not in the Chambers list, but it would have been better if all had been, firstly in the interests of coherence, but primarily because that would have eliminated the ambiguities of 34d. I have no doubt that the word with the obvious name is the expected entry, but I await the solution notes with interest to see if alternatives were accepted. How could they not be?

I liked this one. It's the first time, from memory, that I have completed one by working backwards. By that, I mean, realising what had to be added, and what had to be deleted, before getting the quotation. To me there is no ambiguity in the names, because the "justified by Chambers" refers to the items to be removed, which are all there under the relevant heading, not the names to be added.

Sorry, xij, but how does that remove the ambiguity about the name in 34d? The 4-letter thematic item to be removed can be replaced by more than one 3-letter name, as many earlier posts have pointed out.

Grid completed, replacements made, book and author identified but after much grid staring nothing reflected symmetrically has appeared. A hint would be much appreciated!

Hi Smartie


I googled- man is the measure of all things - Wiktionary

This provided me with an image that was very helpful.

Remember there is symmetry and in this case symmetry of letters themselves.

It is not the author of the work you are looking for but rather who the quote was attributed to.

Hi smartie, further to djawhufc's comments; the grid is 13 X 13 so there are only 2 possible axes of symmetry.

Finally looked for the right bloke and found the image. Very clever! Thanks for your help djawhufc and ginge!

In an ideal world, the replacements would have no letters unchecked to eliminate ambiguity. But then the forum would have little to discuss, apart from the clue quality which ranged widely and arbitrarily from Everyman-type elegance to Araucaria-type obscurity.

Btw, re names, two things: (1) Cal is not uncommon in Northern Ireland; (2) is it not Bret for Pi?

No, it's Brett for pit. Pit is in chambers as a measure, presumably as in to pit oneself against something? Although conversely there doesn't seem to be anything under pit that suggests measure to me.

Didnt really like this, mainly because I was in the same position as s Pugh. Spent a long time looking for platos and even socrateses before rechecking the author, which is probably my fault.