EV 1682 (Hints)

Enigmatic Variations 1682 (Hints)

Triple Change by Kruger

Hints and tips by Phibs

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I have a suspicion that the phrase which constitutes the title has something to do with bellringing.

Everything I know about campanology, and that isn’t much, I learned from Dorothy Sayers’ The Nine Tailors, where the murderers turn out to be the bells of Fenchurch St Paul. The two unwitting assassins whose names have always stayed in my mind are Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul; the others (all single words) have never ‘stuck’. I doubt they will be required here. My Irish granny was very partial to Bell’s, but that hardly seems relevant.

Has our setter ventured into the world of fids and sliders? Given that the titles of puzzles are rarely meant to be interpreted in the obvious way, I suspect not.

Preamble: In ten clues, part or all of the definition has had a letter added and the result jumbled, sometimes creating additional wordage. These clues need to be reconstructed before solving and then the ten extra letters arranged to describe how the answers to these clues are to be treated before (to complete the TRIPLE CHANGE) being entered at a different location in the grid. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.

In summary, if we can solve a clue as it stands, then we can enter the answer confidently into the grid. In ten clues, we have to remove a letter from the definition and then jumble it – this may result in the number of words decreasing, but it will not increase. So if the clue for 12 across were ‘Our setter goes skipping about (5)”, the wordplay (which is normal) has CRACKS (‘goes’) losing (‘skipping’) C (‘about’), producing RACKS; the definition is TORTURES, a rearrangement of OUR SETTER missing one E, which is the extra letter. We need to note the answer RACKS, because the two things we know for sure are (i) that it isn’t going to be entered at 12 across, and (ii) that it will need to be ‘treated’ prior to entry in whichever slot it’s destined for. The other assumption we can make is that just ten clues and their lights will be affected, so in our example another jumbled clue will supply the raw material for the light at 12 across and RACKS (when treated) will provide the entry at another location with a jumbled clue.

The method seems clear. Solve the normal clues and enter their answers. Solve as many of the ‘jumble’ clues as we can, note the answers and the extra letters, and mark the relevant light in some way to indicate that its letters will come from elsewhere – I will be putting a faint pencil line through the whole light for this purpose. Then we’ll either start to see a relationship between some ‘jumble’ answers and other lights with pencil lines, or we’ll work out what the ten letters are telling us. Remember that all entries will be real words.

Across

12a  Wine-flavoured fruit drop in Egypt not completely withdrawn (5)
The ‘not completely withdrawn’ indicates that multiple letters must be lost from both the beginning and the end of a multi-word phrase prior to a subsequent manipulation.

15a  Delay revolutionary renegade infiltrating former squadron (6)
The renegade is the sort disinclined to linger on a doomed vessel, while the origins of the squadron can be traced back to 1558. At that point the English fleet was divided into three squadrons for ease of management, with the one here being at the top of the pile, followed by the blue and then the white.

18a  Partisan died at this place – overcome by someone against losing independence (8)
The part of the wordplay before the dash yields the two elements which will be contained by a four-letter word that has been deprived of a single letter.

21a  Reportedly, wet gear put on this EU component (4)
The answer here is a homophone for something that wet clothing might be put on to dry off.

23a  European visits lavatory in French city (4)
I have never seen ‘visits’ as an insertion indicator before, and I guess that the potential justification for it is the Chambers definition ‘to make a stay in, eg of migratory birds’. The main element of the wordplay is an American slang term normally preceded by ‘the’.

24a  Solo song covers old Scotsman’s payment to widow in Goehr’s opera (7)
The “old Scotsman’s payment to widow” is an obsolete term from Scots law, which could itself be cryptically indicated by ‘Angola navy’. I found myself unable to name any of Alexander Goehr’s operas, and the one here didn’t make it into his entry in Chambers Biographical Dictionary, so I needed the web to confirm the answer.

30a  Small flock of sheep in outskirts of serene Lhasa (6)
The four-letter term for a small flock of sheep could also have been defined as “to stumble or catch one’s foot”.

34a  He will have informed Attorney General about money from Riga once before (7)
The wordplay is a 2+3+2 charade, the ‘once before’ leading to an archaic word meaning ‘before’ (as well as being the tincture gold or yellow, in which guise it is often seen in puzzles). The definition can be read as “One who provides information to the Attorney General”.

Down

6d  In the end, tastes mushroom found on bulk of tree – not bad! (7)
This is a 1+3+3 charade – the mushroom is of the sort most often found in wordplays, and the last element contributes part of a word in plain view.

7d  With rising eccentricity, venerable bishop resigns from it (8)
A word on display in the clue sees one abbreviation changing its position and another abbreviation departing. The word ‘from’ is doing double duty, being required both by the wordplay (‘resigns from’) and the definition, wherein the ‘it’ is what Freda was determined to do with Barry in Victoria Wood’s song, despite Barry’s expressed preference for reading his catalogue on vinyl flooring.

9d  Whip announced Mac’s turned to the left (4)
This one is ambiguous – the definition could be either side of the homophone indicator, but it turns out that the answer sounds like a word meaning ‘[to] whip’ – or ‘the skin of an animal’.

16d  Badly-constructed tail of expensive MiG leans 45 degrees to the vertical? (9)
The answer here is of the type that I try to avoid in puzzles, simply because of the near-impossibility of defining it reasonably succinctly without using part of the word itself. I think something like ’45° out of 90?’ might just about do it.

20d  Runs round initially for opening of deli food stores (7)
You need to imagine a comma or the word ‘with’ between ‘Runs’ and ’round’ in this clue where one single letter replaces another. These ‘runs’ are the kind that necessitated Lady Madonna’s  Thursday night mending session.

25d  Be still occupying a new garden seat (5)
The difficulty here is likely not to be interpreting the wordplay (the major element of which is a word meaning ‘[to] be still’), but unjumbling the remainder of the clue to find the nine-letter definition.

27d  Badges from Spain entering ratings (5)
The key element of the wordplay is a four-letter informal word for the sort of ratings that might be clearing the decks or battening down the hatches.

30d  On record, Cher’s last to appear on day before festival (4)
I had a question recently about the use of ‘on’ as a juxtaposition indicator, where I suggested that it could technically be used for any combination of before or after, across or down, but that I would never use it as an ‘after’ indicator in a down clue because it was so clearly counterintuitive; that’s what it is here, though. The ‘on record’ has the required sense in “Phew what a scorcher! Hottest day on record!”

Definitions in clues are underlined

It’s likely that a few checked letters in a marked light will at some point chime with the answer to a ‘jumble’ clue elsewhere, and you’ll start to get the idea of what’s going on. Once you’ve identified the ten special clues and marked all their lights, it may still take a little while to get every answer, and you might find yourself identifying the entry from the checkers and then working back to the clue and to the unjumbled definition. Personally, I had established the entry method long before I got all ten of the extra letters – if you do the same, you’ll probably guess what they are going to spell, which may enable you to remove the extra letter from the definition of any lingering ‘jumbled definition’ clues, making solving them a little easier.

There were some tricky ‘normal’ clues, a few of which pushed the boundaries of cryptic language, and blind-solving the ‘jumbled definition’ clues was an additional challenge. Once the second part of the ‘triple change’ (1 – sort out the definition, 2- modify the answer, 3 – find where to enter it) became clear, thus also restricting the number of potential entry points for each modified answer based on its length, the finishing line was in sight.

Phibs Toughness Rating : 🥾🥾🥾🥾 (Not suitable for novices)

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