The first version of this puzzle was oh so different from the published version. I had the title Highway 61 Revisited and a 5×5 grid spaced out with arrows in between each cell. The clues gave numbers that went into the 25 cells and solvers had to find the number of routes that went from the bottom left to the top right of the grid that totalled 61 and write the number of journeys made below the grid taking heed of the title. This was the twist that the editors didn’t get in that you had to add 1 onto your answer as the ones you found were revisits! The grid fill was also too easy and searching through all 70 routes left Mark, I think, losing the will to live!! It was therefore rejected.

So it was back to the drawing board for a rethink and some prog rock! I decided to keep the title and have me make a journey on that road in a car that solvers would have to identify which was a bit rich considering I don’t drive!

The car had to be the Concorde of the road the Bugatti Veyron. I started on this version a few years ago and decided to use the letter/number assignment type of clues and have them make words with a motoring connection. In puzzles of this sort I do like to help solvers and so used the hidden locations device that I usually reserved for my prog rock puzzles. As I’d first heard about the car on Top Gear I decided to make the letters form a phrase. The first phrase I considered was TOP GEAR NICK VW but rejected that on legal advice for the longer TOP GEAR CHUMS FIND VW instead!

I required a symmetrical grid that had 26 as the highest clue number and as the digits were to be taken two at a time mod 26, Bugatti Veyron needed 26 cells, and a 10×6 rectangle would allow this to appear nice and symmetrically. That done and with the appropriate digits inserted into the 26 cells the clue writing loomed large.

I stared for ages and eventually came up with the PORSCHE clue. The puzzle was then put aside until the summer of 2011 when after hearing that Tribute to a Horticulturist was to appear I felt that I should finish this one off.

The setting went fairly well as I didn’t have the constraint of a completely filled in grid to start with and about three quarters of the way through I realised that the road trip scenario on Highway 61 was just plain daft! I had chosen the Bugatti Veyron because I’d seen it on Top Gear in one of the amazing Top Gear Challenges, in particular the race with Clarkson and a truffle in the Veyron and May and Hammond in a Cessna light aircraft. I would celebrate this instead and as I couldn’t find my son’s DVD which had that challenge on it and somewhat surprisingly it wasn’t being shown on Dave either I resorted to Google to find the starting point which I knew was a place in Italy. I was surprised to find that it was Turin as I’d thought it was a wee village but Turin was probably the nearest big place as the aircraft had to take off from an airport presumably. The title would be changed and I felt that an anagram of Turin London would be appropriate.

One of my colleagues at work, who had too much time on his hands one day, decided to get anagrams for all the people in the maths department as he’d found a program on the web that did this. He was particularly overjoyed with the one he’d found for me which was ‘ Loutish Scatterbrain ‘. And even although I pointed out that he hadn’t spelt Alastair correctly he still printed it out and stuck it on the wall at my desk in the maths base and it’s still there beside the Shakespearean Insult Generator and a Father’s Day present from my daughter of Beautiful Dance Moves which are mathematical functions!!

I managed to find the same program and typed in Turin London and searched down the possibilities. Old Nit Or Nun just leapt out of the screen at me and how apt. Clarkson, the old nit, and May, the nun. I hope that’s not libellous.

I felt much happier with that change made and completed the clue writing in a few days. The cold solve wasn’t too bad either given that the letters fall into 3 sets. As I’ve said before this device does help setters to write clues which are thematic or it helps me at any rate!

Posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012 at 6:15 pm under Setting the scene.
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