EV 1647 (Hints)

Enigmatic Variations 1647 (Hints)

Happy Ending by Kcit

Hints and tips by Phibs

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I asked Gemini what he could tell me about today’s setter that might help when solving his puzzles.

As usual, he was a veritable mine of ideas, including:

Cryptic with a twist: Phi is known for his cryptic clues, but he tends to avoid overly obscure references or relying solely on crossword jargon. He strives for clues that feel natural and might even appear as regular sentences at first glance.

Background: Introduced to crosswords by his father, he developed a passion for solving and eventually constructing them.

Other interests: He is a big fan of contemporary classical music and enjoys quizzes.

The other suggestions seemed, I’m sorry to say, rather less helpful than the ones above.

Preamble: Eight clues are out of place, and the answer to each must be entered, after modification, at one of the other possible positions where it will fit. The modifications ensure the grid conforms to the HAPPY ENDING in the unclued shaded entry (in ODE, as are 25 and 37). Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.

A pleasing (to me) absence of clueing gimmicks, but eight clues form some kind of closed group, with the entries not only coming from one of the other clues in the group but also being modified prior to entry. The preamble doesn’t say anything about enumerations, which suggests that the modifications will not involve a change of entry length, and we might assume that the numbers in brackets give the length of both answer and grid entry – however, that could be unwise, remembering Benny Hill’s observation that ASSUME makes an ASS out of U and ME. Anyway, there’s nothing to do but start solving, using an erasable medium to enter our answers.

Across

6a    A European cycling organiser (6)
The appearance of ‘cycling’ usually indicates that a word or phrase is to have a group of one or more letters moved from the end to the start (what in my assembler programming days would have been called a cyclic shift). ‘A lady cycling’ could lead to YALAD, DYALA , ADYAL or LADYA. Here our cyclist is a native of a Europe country – one might think that they will contribute five letters to follow the ‘A’, but one would think wrong.

15a    Fellow abandoning water transport – like me, proverbially? (3)
I have underlined the whole clue, although this (4-1) subtraction clue isn’t an &lit as such. Rather, the part before the hyphen is the wordplay that the ‘definition’ part after the hyphen draws on to provide the necessary context, and without which it would be inadequate.

16a    Describing fever: very, very dry, endlessly needing a lot of drinks (10)
The wordplay delivers elements of 1, 3 and 6 letters respectively, with the ‘lot’ of drinks being a good stock of a particular type thereof.

17a    Old, old lesson is initially about Australian shrub (7)
There are four wordplay elements here, the only one which exceeds a single character in length being a word for a lesson which (although qualified in the clue by ‘old’) is not in fact shown by Chambers as being archaic or obsolete; it is also the surname of a writer of nonsense verse.

23a    Longing to see movement of new joint (4)
An adjective meaning ‘longing’ has a single letter (the abbreviation for another word in the clue) moved within it.

26a    River couple, one of which has got on board ship (4)
You will probably have come across ‘on board ship’ (sometimes just ‘on board’) being used in cryptics to indicate containment by a particular pair of letters representing the ship, but here we have a twist – of the ‘couple’ in question, one has got on board while the other one remains on the quayside.

40a    Polish politicians appear to get justice for latest European (4)
A four-letter word is to receive a single letter to replace the last instance (‘latest’) of another one, both being abbreviations for words in the clue.

Down

3d    Fix recent German row with departure of Italy (6)
A three-letter word from the German language is followed by a (4-1) element, the result being a word which could also have been defined by other equally delicate euphemisms such as ‘alter’ and ‘cut’.

8d    Free to embrace lecturer with vision (7)
The tricky bit here is identifying the six-letter word meaning ‘[to] free’ which embraces the lecturer.

14d    Setter, apparently to be on the safe side, producing Arab garment (6)
You may have come across ‘having retired’ in a cryptic clue indicating that something is ‘in bed’, ie contained by the letters BED – eg ‘Men having retired’ for BORED [OR in BED]. The phrase ‘to be on the safe side’ needs to be interpreted on similar lines (the ‘apparently’ is there to suggest something a little out of the ordinary) in order to establish where the two letters representing the setter must go.

28d    Fruit dish from Portugal missing a date (6)
This is one of those clues where both the answer and the key element of the wordplay are relatively obscure, although the two letters which need to be removed from one to produce the other are clear enough. The latter is a national dish of Brazil, consisting of black beans stewed with salt pork, sausage, bacon, jerked beef, onions, garlic, and tomatoes, and served with rice. Yum.

24d    Republican, upset, having come round with passion (7)
Both the ‘Republican’ and the ‘with’ contribute three letters to the answer; I initially thought that the former would lead to an abbreviation, but in fact it gives a word which Chambers tells us could also be indicated by ‘radical’, ‘anarchist’, ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’.

30d    That woman’s twisted in English exhibit in a new way (6)
A three-letter wordplay element is reversed, and followed by an abbreviation of the same length which is rarely seen in puzzles, perhaps because it is not well known even among setters.

Definitions in clues are underlined

We find that the erasable medium was not, in fact, de rigueur, since each of the ‘out of place’ clues helpfully (I think) delivered an answer which would not fit in its appointed grid position. There should be enough checked letters in the shaded entry to facilitate an educated guess, and although the phrase is not in Chambers it can be found in ODE or the online Collins dictionary. It should then be clear what kind of thing will result from the modifications, which will be of great assistance in dealing with any of the eight clues which are unsolved (solving all of them is not, in fact, strictly necessary). No highlighting is required, so just make sure that the eight entries are all of the modified sort and send off your entry.

The ordinary clues were very fair, which meant that the unclued entry, and thus the theme, could readily be deduced. Some of the special clues were quite tricky to ‘blind solve’ (particularly given the enumeration disparity), so a degree of reverse engineering may well have been required. Oh, and what Gemini omitted to tell us was that Kcit has lived in New Zealand since 2006.

Phibs Toughness Rating : 🥾🥾/🥾🥾🥾 (The ‘special’ clues themselves are the hardest part)

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