EV 1634 (Hints)

Enigmatic Variations 1634 (Hints)

The Magnificent Seven by Gaston

Hints and tips by The Numpties

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This will be Gaston’s 28th EV crossword. He has been setting two or three a year for ten years, so you will probably have solved his crosswords before and know what a range of themes he handles – and that you are in good hands.

Preamble:  Single-letter clashes occur in circled cells; reading in column order, picking one of the letters in each clash will spell out what THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN have in common; the other 14 letters should be entered in the cells. In each clue, the wordplay leads to the answer and a single extra letter; reading in clue order, these letters show how one would access one of the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN using the (appropriately positioned) circled letters. Its creator (4,8) should be written below the grid. One answer is an abbreviation. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended. 

We realized that there were two devices in operation here. There was a circle in every column and we were going to separate the clashes that appeared in each of those into a set that would spell out ‘what the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN have in common’ and a set that we would actually enter into those cells that we were somehow going to use. The other device, those extra letters, were going to tell us how those 14 letters in our cells would be used (they were ‘appropriately placed’ we noted). It soon became clear that choosing one of those clashing letters was giving us only one real word, either across, or down.

Across

8a           Keep going filling very large dryers (5)
Of course, an extra letter has to come out of every clue. Here we used the usual abbreviation for ‘very large’ and put a word for ‘keep going’ into it.

14a         Rue damage with a song (7)
It’s not the ‘regret’ type of rue that you need. We added a word for damage to a couple of words for ‘a song’, remembering that we needed that extra letter.

18a         Fast-running Australian head honcho with help swallowing cold derivative of lactose (9, two words)
Clearly Gaston was faced with a stinker to clue here! We split it up into a three-letter ‘fast-running Australian’, a three-letter abbreviation for that head honcho, and a short word for ‘help’ that had to swallow the ‘cold’.

28a       Sailor with tattered clothes getting drunk with a strong wine (9)
I comment in my weekly blogs on the Listener crossword in Listen With Others that most setters seem unable to compile a crossword without some alcohol in it. Gaston is no different. Here he uses a short, familiar crossword word for that sailor, another for the tattered clothes, and an even shorter one for ‘drunk’ and all of that (after a letter is removed) produces the strong red wine.

32a       Rector out late fractures kneecaps (7)
A generous clue once you have worked out what that ‘fractures’ requires. Remember the abbreviation for the Rector.

36a       Sassoon and Fleming, perhaps, from old island town (7)
Gaston gave himself another tough one to clue but gave us a generous pair of names. It is the most well-known Fleming (at least for us) who has to be added to Sassoon – not Siegfried, here – to give us an ancient name of a town on an island – or someone from there (once a letter has been removed, of course).

Down

7d            Egyptian snake symbols for all to see, I rush over (5)
The plural word was new to us but it is spelled out by the wordplay elements. We used just one letter for ‘for all to see’ then ‘I rush’ gave us five letters that obviously had to be reversed (over). One, of course, had to be the ‘extra letter’.

10d          Bit of cereal I found under little money tree (6)
We started with the short word for a little bit of money, then used a tiny bit of cereal I found under it.

11d          Bud‘s expression of annoyance over genre of film (6)
Another new word for us – this bud. We used a familiar short expression of annoyance then reversed (over!) a ‘genre of film’.

20d         Old African group fractures internally after uprising (4)
Gaston has used a ‘hidden reversal’ to give us this abbreviated old African group.

27d        Confer a degree on two earls leaving cells (5)
We are not used to this wordplay element in its verbal form (‘confer a degree on’) but tend to think of it as the one getting that honour. Two earls have to leave for the cells.

29d        Bob maybe drunk (4)
And a final Gastonian alcoholic touch. When we remembered to remove that extra letter, we had the ‘bob maybe’.

We managed to find the message spelled out by those extra letters and we did our best to ‘access’ one of the Magnificent Seven but we needed the help of Wikipedia (as we so often do!) and we were grateful for the prompt that we managed to extract from the clashing letters in circles. It was a combination of those two that led us to the thematic creator.

Don’t forget to write that name of the ‘creator’ below the grid. Do please send in your entry and add your comments here and to the setters’ blogs that are appearing on Big Dave’s site on Thursdays and to the detailed blogs that also appear on Thursdays on  fifteensquared.

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