Solution: Swimming Area
Answer: JOHN COLLIER
Written by Jonathan
The first step is to solve the clues. We also notice they can be grouped into 4 sets of 5 words, each of which have a unique length in their group ranging from 3 to 7. Each set of words can have a word relating to one of the four swimming strokes used in Individual Medleys (as clued by IM in the flavor text) prepended or appended to them.
| Clue | Answer | Stroke |
|---|---|---|
| Part of the skeleton | Bone | (Breast) bone |
| Pause in activity | Break | Break (free) |
| Uncontrolled growth of cells in the body | Cancer | (Breast) cancer |
| Baseball position | Catcher | (Fly) catcher |
| Antonym of go | Come | Come(back) |
| Abbreviation for central banking system of the USA | Fed | (Breast)fed |
| Wheat flour constituent | Gluten | Gluten-(free) |
| Feeling based on intuition | Hunch | Hunch(back) |
| Inculcate | Implant | (Breast) implant |
| Plane | Jet | (Fly)jet |
| What one is after three strikes | Out | Out(back) |
| No longer in progress | Over | (Fly)over |
| Dish | Plate | (Breast) plate |
| One-fourth | Quarter | Quarter(back) |
| Popular board game | Risk | Risk-(free) |
| King or queen, e.g. | Royalty | Royalty-(free) |
| Change over | Switch | Switch(back) |
| Tariff | Tax | Tax-(free) |
| Heavy burden | Weight | (Fly)weight |
| Rotating disc | Wheel | (Fly)wheel |
Once identified, we note that in an individual medley race, the stoke order is butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and finally, freestyle. As clued by the flavor text, we fill in the grid with the words associated with each stroke, from shortest to longest. Noting that fly and breast is prepended to each of the words, while back and free is appended to each word, or just from the realization that in an IM the swimmers move forward in the first and third lap, and “backward” in the second and fourth lap, we enter the words forward in the fly and breast lap, and backwards in the back and free lap.
 | J | E | T | O | V | E | R | W | H | E | E | L | W | E | I | G | H | T | C | A | T | C | H | E | R | Lap 1 |
| R | E | T | R | A | U | Q | H | C | T | I | W | S | H | C | N | U | H | E | M | O | C | T | U | O | Lap 2 | |
| F | E | D | B | O | N | E | P | L | A | T | E | C | A | N | C | E | R | I | M | P | L | A | N | T | Lap 3 | |
 | Y | T | L | A | Y | O | R | N | E | T | U | L | G | K | A | E | R | B | K | S | I | R | X | A | T | Lap 4 |
Finally, reading off the highlighted cells in yellow in swimming order yields the final answer, JOHN COLLIER.