EV 1653 (Hints)

Enigmatic Variations 1653 (Hints)

Petitioned King by Pandiculator

Hints and tips by Phibs

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Pandiculation is ‘an instinctive movement, consisting in the extension of the legs, the raising and stretching of the arms, and the throwing back of the head and trunk, accompanied by yawning; it occurs before and after sleeping, also in certain nervous affections, as hysteria, and at the accession of a fit of ague.’

‘Pandiculator’ itself is the future imperative of the Latin verb pandiculari, and means something like ‘…then stretch’. It is also the name of a legendary auto shotgun with a 24 shell drum in the game Unturned 3, and of a device which was sold in America for many years and almost certainly caused more discomfort than it relieved. Let’s hope that isn’t true of today’s setter.

Preamble: A description of two consecutive moves made by a PETITIONED KING is spelt out by single extra letters generated by wordplay in across clues. Solvers must approximately enact the king’s moves by twice moving and reorienting him relative to his petitioner (nine cells in a straight line to be highlighted) into other entries within the grid, each time overwriting cells and leaving blank cells in the departed location. The work in which the king appears could be said to be represented by the removal of single words from nine down clues before solving. Ignoring blank cells, real words, names, and phrases are maintained at all stages. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.

We have two clue gimmicks to deal with. In every across clue, the wordplay produces a surplus letter not required in the answer, so in Stokes hit wicket (5)” the wordplay leads to S + THUMP, the answer is STUMP, and the extra letter is H. Remember that the term ‘wordplay’ can also refer to a second definition, so the clue “Small type (4)” leads to SORT, with the ‘wordplay’ giving SHORT, extra letter H.

Nine down clues contain an unwanted word. In ‘extra word’ clues it is implicit that the word must be removed before the clue can be solved. In a clue like “Left idiot making bread (4)” for LOAF [L + OAF], the word ‘making’ is redundant, but the clue is perfectly sound with it there; in “Left idiot eating bread“, however, the word ‘eating’ renders the clue insoluble and is therefore a ‘stowaway’ that must be removed.

So the orders of the day involve solving all the clues, working out the message from the across clues, identifying the extra words in the down clues, and then trying to get a toehold into the endgame.

Across

1a    Bulgarian young lady lying about having grown reserves (6)
The diminutive young lady who ‘lies about’ at the end of the wordplay is one of those who were presented at court up until 1958, when the ceremony was abolished by the Queen; as her sister so delicately observed, “We had to put a stop to it. Every tart in London was getting in.”

7a    Wind alters headgear (5)
The use (as here) of imperative verbs as anagram indicators can make for interesting clues, and most setters have their own favourites – ‘police’, ‘doctor’ and ‘school’ are very handy ones. Note, though, that they have to be placed at the start of the wordplay, and if the clue is more than a simple anagram then you have to be careful to ensure that the cryptic reading is grammatically sound.

11a    Trojan regularly let out office of Central Americans (8)
There are three elements to the wordplay here, each contributing (before deductions) three letters. The last of these relies on ‘office’ being one of many euphemisms for something also known as ‘the smallest room’; the synonym required here is shown by Chambers as ‘slang’, but I think ‘US slang’ would be more accurate.

13a    Short lass leads one very Scottish trio that’s divine (6)
This is a tricky customer. A four-letter word for a ‘lass’ must be cut short and stripped of the extra letter, while the ‘Scottish’ qualifies both ‘one’ and ‘very’, with each providing a two-letter word.

25a    Claudius’s courtier is leaving Horus’s father in charge (5)
Horus’s father first loses a pair of consecutive letters and then gives up the bonus letter. The answer is the name of a minor character in Hamlet.

32a    Winch wedged in cubic sleeves takes wheels (8)
The ‘winch’ leads to a four-letter word with many meanings, of which this will probably not be the most familiar, while the sleeves are the sort that might be associated with a jumper but not an LP. The verb of which the answer is an inflection is shown by Chambers as transitive, so strictly speaking the definition should be ‘takes wheels from’.

36a    Comparatively severe vintage nobleman barking lines (8)
It’s only quite recently that I added ‘barks’ and ‘barking’ (the latter sometimes also seen introducing an anagram) to my database of containment indicators – Chambers giving one meaning of ‘bark’ as ‘to encrust’ – so I quickly decrypted the last two words of the wordplay as “containing an abbreviation for ‘lines'”. One might be tempted to think that the remaining seven letters (including the extra one) would be supplied by an old name for a nobleman, but in fact the ‘vintage’ and the ‘nobleman’ separately deliver words of three and four letters respectively.

42a    Lesson covering Perth landowner’s acreage with enthusiasm primarily (4)
The phrasing of the wordplay doesn’t do the solver any favours, but what it means is that a single letter abbreviation which occurs within a (familiar) word for a landowner in Perth (Scotland) must be replaced (ie covered) with the letter suggested by ‘enthusiasm primarily’.

44a    Royals repositioned sentry (5)
Not an intrinsically difficult clue, but without the ‘big red book’ you may have trouble finding the required sense of the word ‘royal’, which apparently resulted from an error by George Gascoigne in his 1575 page-turner The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting (previously the term was applied to the second rather than the third item). In Chambers, it is the penultimate definition of the noun.

45a    Will’s weights from gym are metal plates (6)
The ‘from’ is there to link the definition to the wordplay, which delivers elements of 2, 1 and 4 letters, the ‘metal plates’ being studs or small plates used to reinforce the soles of shoes.

Down

1d    Worry brought about tremors after rejecting awkward truth (7)
An anagram indicator which may be unfamiliar adds to the difficulty of this (12-5) subtractive anagram

3d    Dull and cheerless sea fish (5)
One of the easier clues in the puzzle, but one which for those solvers who know the names of many fish but not necessarily the natural habitat associated with them could lead to the stowaway being overlooked.

5d    Starting in second place, driving swiftly in Miami, passing as well as possible (5)
A convoluted clue which is far easier than it looks at first glance. ‘Staring in second place’ is intended to suggest that the first letter of the word for ‘driving swiftly’ is to be omitted.

9d    Money to support each elderly trader in Baltic weather (10)
Once the stowaway has been dealt with, we are left with an eight-letter word ‘supporting’ a two-letter abbreviation.

10d    DJ bedding rampant old flame’s half-concealed outdated fitted sheet (6)
There’s plenty of untangling to do here, including the removal of a stowaway. ‘Rampant’ indicates reversal, ‘half-concealed’ means that half of a word in the clue is to be deleted, and ‘fitted’ is the past participle of ‘fit’ in the sense of ‘to alter’.

34d    Northerner’s hairnet on end of frosty pipe (5)
One of those clues where if you don’t know the northern English term for a hairnet or the extractive engineer’s name for a particular rod or pipe attached to the drill column, then you are going to be dependent upon checkers and Chambers. The hairnet forms the first part of a name often seen on packets at the breakfast table.

Definitions in clues are underlined

Not a trivial grid fill, and the message which emerged probably didn’t narrow the thematic possibilities down much. If nothing has jumped out at you, I can suggest two possible ways forward: (i) searching the grid for the nine-letter ‘petitioner’, or (ii) looking up each of the extra words in Chambers to find something that they have in common. I spotted the name, and in combination with ‘king’ and Google I was able to find a relevant video clip (shades of Steve McQueen and his baseball in Ifor’s Aircon) that showed me roughly where in the grid the action needed to take place (note: don’t assume that ‘into other entries’ in the preamble necessarily means ‘replacing complete entries’). The name of the work allowed me to quickly make sense of the extra words, if not the puzzle’s title.

This was quite a tough puzzle, with a grid that would be highly impressive if it has been created by man with pen and paper rather than machine. Identifying the theme from the pointers on offer may have taken some time, particularly for those unfamiliar with the work in question, but the final outcome is unambiguous.

Phibs Toughness Rating : 🥾🥾🥾/🥾🥾🥾🥾 (For experienced barred puzzle solvers only)

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