EV1700
One Hundred with Seven Inside by Proximal
Setter’s Blog
Twelve clues have prepositions moved to the end; first letters of these give DRYDEN and JONSON, the former criticising the latter’s PREPOSITION STRANDING. Four entries have prepositions moved to the end.
As usual with the turn of another century of EV puzzles, I decided to take the spot myself for the imminent EV1700. The theme simply came about from researching events from 1700 which might show potential (none did), which I then extended to famous people born or who died in 1700.
Noting John Dryden, the first Poet Laureate, died in 1700 and then researching further in his Wikipedia entry to find his coining of ‘preposition stranding’ (using a preposition to end a sentence) as an objection to Ben Jonson’s phrase ‘The bodies that those souls were frighted from’, it seemed something interesting to wordsmiths and something a theme could be built upon.
With DRYDEN and JONSON being six letters, I decided it would be suitable to generate six letters from across clues and six from down to introduce the two characters in the theme. It also seemed apt that these clues should demonstrate the disputed style and moving a preposition from earlier in the clue to the end looked like it could work, as a thematic gimmick and also something of a novelty. I could then simply ask solvers to note first letters of these thematic clues to spell out the names.
The endgame would be to highlight PREPOSITION STRANDING after some thematic manipulations in the grid, in the form of prepositions moving to the end of entries. There wasn’t to much constraint on the grid by doing this, so it wasn’t very time-consuming; it’s fairly easy using Qxw to make sure changed entries create new real crossing words.
The link to 1700 was a bit tenuous, but I was happy with the theme and the way in which it worked in this puzzle. Of course, I’m sure all solvers know a preposition is something you shouldn’t end a sentence with.
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A full review of this puzzle can be seen over on fifteensquared.