EV 1665 (Hints)

Enigmatic Variations 1665 (Hints)

Untitled by Luxor

Hints and tips by Phibs

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The credit for inventing the Alphabetical Jigsaw belongs to Araucaria, although his AJs were blocked puzzles with 26 unnumbered lights.

Their clues, labelled A-Z to match the first letter of their answer, were written in rhyming couplets and, as with most of Araucaria’s Guardian puzzles, they did on occasion take (more than) a few liberties when it came to their cryptic reading. This wasn’t because Araucaria knew no better – he was very well aware of the ‘rules’ and, much like Picasso in another genre, consciously chose to break them. I believe that his last AJ puzzle was published in 2011, when John Graham was well into his ninety-first year, and it is still available on the Guardian website (as is the accompanying blog on fifteensquared).

Preamble: The puzzle is temporarily UNTITLED because the letters of the title are missing. All clues are given in alphabetical order of their answers and must be entered into the grid where they will fit. Solvers must enter a single letter from each column into the barred off cell at the top, revealing the title across the row. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.

Another EV, another jigsaw. This promises, though, to be considerably easier than Piccadilly’s recent brainteaser to piece together. The clues are normal (hurrah!), and further good news is that we have just two eight-letter answers and two nine-letter answers, with mixed pairs of these intersecting in the NW and SE corners; getting the NW ones will immediately give us the first letters of no less than eleven other entries. Anyone who has completed the last few EVs will surely have honed their jigsaw technique close to perfection; for those new to such puzzles, I will reiterate that the clues being presented in alphabetical order of solutions is a significant 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 CHIPS and the ninth is COD, the eighth answer lies alphabetically within the small range between them. Make sure to write all the answers against the clues, even if you can put them straight into the grid, because they may help you with a nearby clue.

Note that sometimes setters are a little sparing with their use of punctuation, and there are at least four clues in this puzzle (the 10th, 17th, 34th and 42nd ones) where a comma needs to be assumed in the cryptic wordplay.

Clues (numbered for ease of reference only)

1  Arrears occasionally covered by returning pop fans (7)
For ‘occasionally’ read ‘every so often’, while the ‘pop’ is the sort that might be preceded by ‘cream’ or followed by ‘water’.

2  Scottish element of property rental platform losing two billion (4)
This clue wouldn’t have appeared twenty years ago, when the ‘property rental platform’ was but a glint in the eye of its Californian progenitors.

3  Superb time – endless fun – it’s divine being in Tonga! (4)
The two characters corresponding to ‘superb’ were used for a number of years to designate a first-class vessel in the Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, the first character indicating the condition of the hull and the second the state of the fittings (masts, rigging etc), although in the original 1764 Register the fittings were rated as G, M or B (‘good’, ‘middling’ or ‘bad’). There are those (myself among them) who would argue that ‘endless’ can only legitimately indicate the loss of the last letter of a word, but it is often used cryptically in a more whimsical sense to mean ‘without ends’.

11  Product of hardwood tree – barrier overturned in wind (7)
It sounds like there’s some bad weather around, but this ‘wind’ won’t be found on the Beaufort scale – in fact, it’s not even a noun.

17  Bogus alert call to start nuclear reactor (7)
This is one of those ‘missing comma’ clues, where the cryptic reading requires a pause (or a ‘with’) between ‘Bogus’ and ‘alert’, since the second element of the wordplay needs to be put in front of the second. The definition is shorthand for ‘site of nuclear reactor’.

19  Moon framing island race (4)
The moon in question belongs to Jupiter, while the ‘island’ leads to an abbreviation of the name given to a particular island.

22  Having similar forms of depression from social mixing holding nothing back (9)
It is a three-letter word for ‘nothing’ which must be reversed and ‘held’ by an anagram.

25  Badly nourished and tailless bird (5)
Sometimes being a setter can help when solving clues. Here, I asked myself why the author had included the word ‘and’, since omitting it would have improved rather than spoiled the surface reading. The reason must be that it has an active role in the cryptic reading, and so it turns out – when ‘tailless’, it follows a word which, as well as ‘badly nourished’, can mean many other things including ‘depressed’.

26  Has to cut short part for old bridle nosepiece (6)
At first blush it looks as though something in the wordplay must be ‘cut short’, but in fact the first element is to be ‘cut’ and the second is ‘short’, ie they must both be deprived of their last letters.

30  Trashy boxing simulation set up giving out-of-hand predictions? (9)
The three-letter abbreviation involved here is a relatively new addition to Chambers, while the ‘trashy’ word can also mean ‘meagre’. The definition is mildly cryptic.

33  Portugal possesses islands in stage of development (6)
A 1+3+2 charade leads to a word which is to be found in Chambers sharing a meaning with a familiar, and similar, five-letter word (under whose entry it appears).

38  Close up over hoax hypnotic drug (7)
I’ve never been entirely convinced by ‘over’ as a containment indicator, but here it is used in that way; ‘close up’ is the sort of thing you might do to an envelope.

43  Reported evil leader of triad, an agent of unnatural darkness (6)
The first part of this 3+1+2 charade is a homophone which by itself is not a real word.

45  Directs tense trade moving first of stock southwards (5)
One letter in a four-letter word needs to be moved ‘southwards’.

47  Cast heard informally from beginning to end (4)
There are two possible answers to this homophone clue – the correct one is explicitly shown in Chambers as ‘informal’ and doesn’t end in O.

Definitions in clues are underlined

By the time you have a full grid, you may already have spotted what is required. If not, consider closely the instruction to ‘enter a single letter from each column’ into the cell at the top of that column, and all should become clear. No highlighting or grid changes are required, so that’s job done.

The clues weren’t all straightforward, but the fact that only three of the long answers had to be identified before one could start filling the grid made things a lot easier. Once the key to the endgame had been found, completion of this pleasingly clued and neatly constructed puzzle was but a short hop away.

Phibs Toughness Rating : 🥾🥾/🥾🥾🥾 (Suitable for all except barred puzzle novices)

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