EV 1688 (Hints)

Enigmatic Variations 1688 (Hints)

Spies by Luxor

Hints and tips by Phibs

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I thought I’d give Claude another chance to impress this week, so I asked, “A crossword’s theme involves three spies and the focus of their attention. To whom and what might this refer?”

Claude didn’t think too long before replying.

“There are several possible interpretations for a spy-themed crossword puzzle. Most likely, the three spies could refer to famous fictional spies, with possible combinations including:

James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Jack Ryan; George Smiley, Alec Leamas, and Jim Prideaux (from John le Carré novels); three characters from TV shows like “Alias,” “The Americans,” or “Homeland”

The focus of their attention could be:

A villain or antagonist organization (SPECTRE, SMERSH); a MacGuffin (secret plans, microfilm, a code); a target location (embassy, safe house)

Alternatively, the puzzle might reference historical spy agencies, with CIA, MI6, and KGB as the three spies, their focus being intelligence gathering during the Cold War.”

That seems like a pretty good answer, but I have a feeling that Luxor may well have eschewed the obvious.

Preamble: A group of spies has gone undercover within the puzzle. Three of their surnames, along with the focus of their attention, are concealed in four clues and must be removed before solving (sometimes with changes to punctuation). Wordplay in 36 other clues generates an extra letter not to be entered into the grid; read in clue order these provide further information about the mission. In the completed grid, solvers must highlight where the results of the surveillance can be found (two words, 15 letters). Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.

A quick count tells us that we will have just two normal clues and four clues with a string of letters to be removed, the remainder being ‘wordplay delivers an extra letter’ clues. Regular solvers will be very familiar with this type of clue, but for anyone who hasn’t encountered the gimmick before, an example of such a clue would be “Continuous movement right outside old Egyptian city (5)” for LUXOR, where the wordplay gives (FLUX R) around O, the extra letter which contributes to the message being an F.

Across

5a  Malaysia pursuing software for contract in Milan (7)
Three letters (originally) equating to ‘Malaysia’ are sandwiched between a term for a piece of software and a short word meaning ‘for’.

13a  Tap liquid assets originally accepted after market backing (4)
Another ‘sandwich’ with a filling that starts off with three letters, this time a reversal of a word for a market in North Africa or the Middle East.

14a  Most unpleasant materials editor scrapped (5)
Unlike me, you will surely notice that ‘materials’ is a plural form, and thus leads to an eight-letter word.

17a  Local bread rolls eaten at first recess (4)
Chambers suggests that the bread rolls here are to be found in Scotland and northern England, but when I used to work in Leicester they were the option available at the local sandwich shop for anyone whose dental situation made tackling a crusty cob problematic. The second part of the wordplay contributes a single letter.

23a  Hebrew character filling vessel with Italian spirit (7)
The character is the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and could be indicated cryptically by ‘very average’; the vessel might put you in mind of Indiana Jones.

26a  Transport across the water curtailed – line lost to rival new car company (7)
The element before the dash provides the first four letters of the answer, and the element after it gives the last three plus the bonus letter.

30a  Island race taking heart-breaking risk (6)
Although the Pedant’s Guide to Crosswords on this site says that “The TT (Tourist Trophy) is not a race, it’s a time trial”, I think that might be a little too pedantic, given that Chambers defines a ‘race’ as “a competitive trial of speed as by running, driving, sailing, etc.” The hyphen towards the end of the wordplay should be mentally replaced with a space.

32a  Light infantry to impress old European city (4)
A two-letter abbreviation precedes a three-letter verb, the result – after the bonus letter is removed – being the name by which a particular city was known during periods of Polish rule.

Down

1d  Academic casually absorbed in papers securing genetic fingerprinting (12, two words)
An ‘informal contraction’ of a word for a senior academic, a two-letter abbreviation for something that you now need to show at English polling stations, and a seven-letter word answering to ‘securing’ (in a permanent sense) are involved in the wordplay.

3d  Seafood starter of perfect charr is son’s aim after cooking (6)
The unusual spelling of the fish is a strong hint that this could be one of the four ‘special’ clues, and indeed a nine-letter string needs to be removed before the clue can be solved.

18d  Flag sides of path and short driveway (4)
A letter selection yielding two letters from a word in plain view is followed by three letters obtained through an unconventional route  – ‘driveway’ must be turned into a synonym, and the standard abbreviation (‘short’) of this synonym used, although the abbreviation is only ever used in a geographical context; this is akin to ‘short watercourse’ being used for ‘river’/R.

21d  World upset by endless riot in Glaswegian Jobcentre (4)
Here ‘endless’ is used in its whimsical sense of ‘having neither a front end nor a back end’, such that the word to which it is applied contributes, after all deductions are made, just a single letter to the answer.

22d  Hollow rock and level bank of gravel in the Cairngorms (4)
The required sense of ‘level’ in the second part of the wordplay derives from the need to bring a weapon such as a crossbow into a horizontal plane before firing it.

Definitions in clues are underlined

You may well be, as I was, unfamiliar with the theme, but the four extracted words are more than enough for a search engine to come up with the goods, as are the salient elements of the ‘further information about the mission’. The preamble shouldn’t leave much doubt about what you are searching for in the completed grid, with Luxor being revealed as a ‘perpendicular Chalicean’ at the completion of that process.

The clues were, for the most part, pretty generous, although, as is often the case with the predominant gimmick here, there were occasions when I found myself working back from the answer to identify the extra letter. Without the aid of the web, the endgame would have been distinctly challenging; with it, that obstacle was swiftly cleared. And Claude? Well, frankly, if he’d correctly identified the ‘spies’ he would have found himself doing the hints and tips for EV 1690 himself.

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

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