EV 1663 (Hints) – Big Dave's Crossword Blog
View comments 

EV 1663 (Hints)

Enigmatic Variations 1663 (Hints)

The Right Fit by Piccadilly

Hints and tips by Phibs

+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +

I thought I’d throw ChatGPT a bit of a curveball, so I asked, “What might a sentence described as ‘apt’ that is concealed in a crossword puzzle entitled ‘The Right Fit’ be?”

The reply was as follows:

A sentence described as “apt” in a crossword puzzle entitled “The Right Fit” could be something concise, clever, and well-suited to the puzzle’s theme, such as:

“Fits like a glove.”

This phrase would be considered “apt” because it directly relates to the theme of something being “the right fit” while also being a commonly understood idiom. Additionally, it has a fitting sense of precision and appropriateness, which aligns with how crosswords require fitting words into exact spaces.

I suspect that, as Roy Walker might have said on Catchphrase, “It’s good, but it’s not right.”

Preamble: Clues are presented in alphabetical order of their answers, which are to be entered to find THE RIGHT FIT. In 38 clues the wordplay leads to the answer plus an extra letter, not entered in the grid. When arranged in conventional clue order (across then down), these extra letters describe an apt sentence to be located and highlighted in the completed grid (20 cells), resolving ambiguities. Remaining clues are normal.

Chambers Dictionary (2016) is – as usual – recommended, but I gather that space constraints have led to the explicit guidance being omitted on this occasion.

EV 1659 presented us with a jigsaw puzzle including bars and answer lengths, and this looks very similar, except that it has a block at its centre. There seem to be a lot of six-letter answers, and mention of ambiguities is a concern when it comes to filling the grid – this is definitely not the time for using an indelible entry medium! There are, however, only two answers each of three, seven, and eight letters, and the three-letter and eight-letter ones intersect, so the NW and SE corners look like the places where we will start entering our answers. Having the clues presented in alphabetical order of answers is always a help – not only does it mean that the early answers will begin with early letters of the alphabet and so on, but also that if, say, the answer to the seventh clue is CAKE and the ninth is CRUMBS, the eighth answer lies alphabetically within the small range between them. Remember also that if you are planning to enter an answer which intersects with the start of another entry – let’s say the answer is POSSIBLE and the seventh letter is also the first letter of a four-letter light – there will need to be a four-letter solution beginning with ‘L’; if you’ve already solved clues that yield KING and MUSIC and the only intervening clue is for a six-letter answer, then POSSIBLE it is not. Make sure to write all the answers against the clues, even if you can put them straight into the grid (ha!), because they may help you with a nearby clue. It’s important with this puzzle to also tick the answers off as you enter them.

In 38 clues the wordplay delivers an extra letter, so if the clue were “Man caught with stringed instrument (4)”, the wordplay would give C+HARP, the answer would be CHAP, and the extra letter (which I always note alongside the clue number) R. The remaining 12 clues are normal, and when I solve these I make a point of putting a dash against the clue number so when it comes to working out the message I can easily see that there is no extra letter.

Clues (numbered in sequence for ease of reference only)

1  Old Germans missing island dancing girls (5)
Knowing the French name for Germany might help you to identify the obsolete seven-letter plural which must lose both an abbreviation and a bonus letter to produce a word which may be familiar to barred-puzzle regulars and devotees of Egyptian terpsichorean displays.

10    Gang, determined, stays (6)
Here we have a 4+3 charade, the first element of which is an uncommon word that shares a spelling with a much more common one meaning ‘innermost part’.

17    Infatuated nut that is holding festival (6)
To avoid potential confusion, typesetters used to refer to the em space as ‘mutton’ and its similar-sounding but narrower brother as ‘nut’; the former rarely appears in cryptic clues, but the latter is a frequent visitor. The festival, marking the first day of  the Vietnamese lunar new year, is another regular – it could be cryptically indicated by ‘You French tenor’.

21    Papers I set identifying stupid person (5)
Here the papers are the sort that travellers might need to produce, and they lead to a two-letter abbreviation, while the ‘set’ might be sold at auction.

26    Most recent cargo includes shell of turtle (6)
You may find yourself working back from the two letters that constitute the turtle’s shell and the accurately-defined answer to establish the four-letter word for a load or cargo.

27   Bungles putting Scottish ornaments around saint (6)
This is a tough one to blind-solve, since the Scottish ornaments provide six of the seven letters generated by the wordplay. The bungles are the kind that might be associated with Oliver Hardy or hungry army officers.

31    Guides many to reverse weapon (6)
A six-letter word meaning ‘guides’ has a four-letter chunk of it reversed.

36    Be sparing with money ancient pilgrim’s pouch contains (6)
As in 27, a familiar-single letter abbreviation is contained by a less-than-familiar word, this time for a pilgrim’s pouch (shown by Chambers as ‘obsolete’, hence the ‘ancient’). The verb that forms the answer is almost always found in a phrase which includes another verb similarly suggesting financial frugality.

43    Clever time for Miles to break away (5)
The cryptic reading requires that ‘Miles’ be read as ‘miles’ and a comma be inserted between ‘Clever’ and ‘time’, since one letter in the word meaning ‘clever’ is to be replaced with another.

44    Garment pinches back with tie inside (6)
Remember that in barred puzzles hyphenated answers are enumerated as single words, so SLIP-ON would be shown as (6). In ‘extra letter’ clues, be on the lookout for words from the clue that are used unchanged in the wordplay but which then surrender the extra letter.

46    Stroke, keeping time, raised whip to finishers in second eight (4)
This whip is particularly associated with the Royal Navy.

50    Here in France wine rotates making imaginary circle (6)
The wine here is fortified, and the ‘making’ is there to link the wordplay to the definition.

Definitions in clues are underlined

I decided to cold-solve all the clues before attempting the grid fill, which took me a while but, in retrospect, was probably not a bad idea. Starting the grid fill with the intersecting pairs of three- and eight-letter entries, I was then able to complete the job pretty quickly. I would strongly recommend solving as many clues as you can before beginning the fill, because in addition to the ambiguities there are other pairs of answers which differ by only a single letter. Having filled the grid, you should be left with three ‘either/or’ pairs (for obvious reasons the wordplays in their clues do not produce extra letters), and by taking the 38 extra letters in ‘normal’ sequence (1a, 6a, 10a etc and then 1d, 2d, 3d etc) you will identify the message. This might not appear very helpful, but in conjunction with the preamble it does indicate the length of the ‘apt sentence’, which may in turn suggest a possible symmetrical arrangement. A hint for anyone struggling with the last part of the problem: the sentence passes through otherwise unchecked letters in all six of the either/or entries.

One can usually start entering answers into ‘jigsaws’ relatively early in the piece, but here it would have been very easy to go wrong. The gimmick made blind-solving the whole lot quite arduous, but doing so paid dividends later, while the signposting towards the location of the ‘apt sentence’ was some way short of explicit. And ChatGPT’s suggestion, in particular its last sentence, was really not far from the truth.

Phibs Toughness Rating : 🥾🥾🥾🥾 (One for experienced themed-puzzle solvers only)


Could new readers please read the Welcome post and the FAQ before posting comments or asking questions about the site.

As this is a Prize crossword, please don’t put any ANSWERS, whether WHOLE, PARTIAL or INCORRECT, or any ALTERNATIVE CLUES in your comment.

Please read these instructions carefully – they are not subject to debate or discussion. Offending comments may be redacted or, in extreme cases, deleted. In all cases the administrator’s decision is final.


1 comment on “EV 1663 (Hints)
Leave your own comment 

  1. Not long back from the delights of Prague, but it’s always a delight to come back to an EV.
    Piccadilly has set a nice puzzle with said ambiguity, plus some dead ends and red herrings. These made filling in an unnumbered grid that more tricky, but once started all became clear.
    Thx to Piccadilly and Phibs

Join the Conversation, Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The maximum upload file size: 2 MB. You can upload: image, audio, video, document, spreadsheet, interactive, text, archive, code, other. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop file here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.