EV 1700 (Hints)

Enigmatic Variations 1700 (Hints)

One Hundred with Seven Inside by proXimal

Hints and tips by Phibs

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A milestone for the EV is marked by a celebratory puzzle from our esteemed editor. I asked Claude, “A puzzle relating to 1700 is cryptically entitled ‘One hundred with seven inside’. Why might that be?”

The response was swift and confident:

This cryptic title likely refers to the Roman numeral representation of 1700, which is MDCC. Breaking it down:

“One hundred” = C (Roman numeral for 100)
“Seven inside” = The Roman numeral for 7 is VII, and if you look at MDCC, you can see that there are seven characters total: M-D-C-C (though this might be stretching it)

More likely, the puzzle is playing with the visual or structural aspects of how 1700 appears in Roman numerals – MDCC contains the elements that could be cryptically described as “one hundred with seven inside,” perhaps referring to how the number is constructed or how its components relate to each other.

Another interpretation could be mathematical: 1700 can be broken down as 100 × 17, and 17 contains the digit 7, so you have “one hundred” multiplied by something containing “seven inside.

The cryptic nature suggests there’s wordplay or a visual/structural puzzle element that makes this description fit 1700 in a clever way that becomes clear once you see the intended solution.

If it turns out that M-D-C-C is indeed the key to the puzzle, all future blogs will be provided by Claude.

Preamble: One word in each of six across clues and six down clues must be moved to the end before solving, exemplifying a disputed style. First letters of these clues can be arranged to give a critic who died in ONE HUNDRED WITH SEVEN INSIDE (across clues) and his target (down clues). Finally, four entries must be modified in a similar way to thematic clues and the disputed style must be highlighted (20 cells in two straight lines). Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended; all entries are real words or phrases.

A word in each of 12 clues must be moved to the end before solving, ie these clues cannot properly be solved without the word having been moved. So in the clue “Setter first cross about nothing (8)”, the word ‘cross’ has to be moved (“Setter first about nothing cross”), such that the wordplay gives PRIMAL (‘first’) containing (‘about’) O (‘nothing’) X (‘cross’), the answer being PROXIMAL. Unless it is part of the definition which is to be relocated, the definition in these clues will by necessity be at the start.

Across

12a  Woodman regularly wearing main sleeveless tunic (5, two words)
Three letters provided by the first two words of the wordplay are ‘wearing’ a pair contributed by the last two words; ‘sleeveless’ here means ‘without a container’.

15a  Delivered alternative ride for daughter with Ford missing (6)
The key to unravelling the fodder for the anagram introduced by ‘alternative’ is to pick the right word for relocation.

37a  Anxious retired soldiers overwhelmed by omen (8)
The 2-letter abbreviation for the members of the armed forces who do not hold commissions is ‘retired’ before being ‘overwhelmed’ by a verbal noun.

38a  Rabbie’s calls to animal experts over handling (5)
With only three words in a wordplay which doesn’t work as it stands, the options for rearrangement are distinctly limited. I must confess to an unease about containment indicators which depend on a sense shown by the dictionary as being specific to a particular container – I feel there is a difference between, say, ‘girdle’, meaning ‘to enclose…as if with a girdle’, and ‘handle’, ‘to hold…with the hand’.

40a  Refinery soon evacuated to modify parts (7)
In the cryptic reading, ‘parts’ at the end of the wordplay is a verb which tells us that a 5-letter term meaning ‘to modify’ must divide a 2-letter element.

Down

1d  Brewers gathering to unite labour with overpowering passion (7)
This is a 3+4 charade, the first element of which is often associated with spelling or, particularly since a certain BBC series started in 2013, sewing.

6d  Overly unreasonable, nipped chum above bust with acceleration (8, three words)
The wordplay will involve elements of 3 and 4 letters being preceded by an element of one letter, but it needs some help before it can do that.

8d  Giving up acting fraudulently gains nothing (8)
I can’t remember having previously seen ‘gaining’ used with the cryptic sense required here, where it describes what a 7-letter word does to the single-letter representation of ‘nothing’.

9d  Night-time before visitor rested penning note (5)
The convention of underlining the definition in these hints leaves one word rather out on a limb. The text elements involved in the wordplay comprise a word of three letters and two single-letter abbreviations.

13d  Land of the Muses that is annexed by Trojan king briefly (6)
The word ‘annex’ can mean ‘to add to the end’, but it also has an informal sense of ‘to appropriate’. Here a 2-letter abbreviation is ‘appropriated’ by 80% of the last (and most famous) king of Troy; the answer does not appear as an entry in Chambers, but it is mentioned under the adjective formed by tacking ‘-n’ on the end of it.

22d  Irregular cavalryman great with everyone is mounted (8)
The text strings that are manipulated in the wordplay consist of 3, 3 and 2 letters, the first being an ‘orig and esp US’ slang term meaning ‘excellent’ or ‘admirably up to date’.

28d  Jaw part clipped going against rogue (6)
Here ‘rogue’ is an anagram indicator, but it surely can’t apply to the word immediately preceding it in the clue as written.

35d  Lowered top of obstacle for small horses (4)
The first letter of a word defined in the wordplay must be ‘lowered’ in the grid.

Definitions in clues are underlined

Once a few of the moving words have been identified, a pattern will start to emerge, which should enable an educated guess at the nature of the ‘disputed style’. Rearranging the initial letters of the gimmicked clues will reveal the surnames of the critic and his target, both of which should be familiar, and the web will supply such background details as are required on their difference of opinion. The four entries to be modified shouldn’t be too hard to spot (they turn out to be pleasingly positioned relative to each other), and the 18 new words which are produced will provide confirmation that the right changes have been made. Having updated the grid, it just remains to highlight the 20 letters that make up a modern description of the style.

The solve flowed nicely, with no mental leaps being called for. At some point in the process, you will understand how the rather mysterious title was arrived at. Did Claude give us anything to go on? The Roman numerals stuff was best glossed over; and while his closing paragraph might seem quite perceptive, all he’s really done is to use my question to make a statement from.

I normally avoid giving an opinion in these blogs on the merits of individual crosswords, but suffice to say that this was a fitting puzzle to mark the milestone, and one which the EV’s founder, James Leonard, would surely have approved of.

Phibs Toughness Rating : 🥾🥾🥾 (A perfect puzzle for solvers of all abilities)

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