EV 1704 (Hints)

Enigmatic Variations 1704 (Hints)

Alchemy by Miles

Hints and tips by Phibs

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Although my college days were a very long time ago, the subject that I ‘studied’ (the inverted commas are entirely appropriate, I’m afraid) was already known as Chemistry, and my experiments involving transmutation were carried out solely on a multiplicity of alcoholic beverages, with results that were as predictable as they were consistent.

Consequently, my knowledge of alchemy is limited to what I learned from Harry Potter, and some research I did a while ago when I was considering it as a theme for a puzzle, but apart from gold being ‘sol’ and silver being ‘luna’, I can’t remember much else. Oh, and I know what an alchemical (or chymical) marriage is, having read Robert Sheckley’s The Alchemical Marriage of Alistair Crompton, where the title character attempts to reunite the three strands of his personality which had been separated in his childhood. Will any of this help? Shouldn’t think so.

Preamble: Solvers are invited to attempt some ALCHEMY. In each clue wordplay provides an extra letter, which is not to be entered. In clue order these extra letters spell out what to start with (three words) and what to iterate (three words). Following these instructions solvers can reach the conclusion of the trick to be represented in two ways in the grid: (i) each instance of what a successful alchemist must NOT have used (eight cells) must be located and connected with a line and a circle, and (ii) 11 cells to be found in two straight lines must be highlighted.. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended

We have what is probably my least favourite clueing gimmick, where the cryptic part of a clue delivers a letter which is not used in the answer. So if the clue were “Those looking happy will not have run a great distance (5)”, the wordplay gives SMILE(r)S, the answer is MILES, and the extra letter is S. Since every clue is affected, we should be able to see words of the message emerging, which may help when it comes to identifying the extra letter in any clues that remain unsolved.

Across

1a  Public address with its superior circuit breaker? (7, two words)
The ‘public address’ leads to the expected two letters, but only one of them features in the answer, followed by a word in plain view and a synonym for ‘superior’.

6a  Odd character that double 14 reveals (4)
I remember writing a clue along the lines of “Repeated appearances of kagoul encapsulating week in the Cairngorms” for OULK, hidden in KAGOULKAGOUL, and this clue is on similar lines, but don’t forget about the wordplay producing an extra letter.

16a  Esau’s first with absolute authority overlooking people here (4)
A single letter selected from a word in the clue is followed by a 10-letter word which is shorn of a 6-letter word for ‘[a] people’, prior to yielding the bonus letter. The clue is intended as an &lit, where the whole thing indicates the ancient kingdom that forms the answer, but it’s tenuous at best.

19a  Lord Lieutenant accepting Burundi is taken in by indisposed sovereign (9)
A pair of 2-letter abbreviations and a 6-letter word meaning ‘indisposed’ participate in a ‘Russian doll’ wordplay. Don’t forget that ‘sovereign’ can be an adjective, and that in barred puzzles like the EV hyphenated answers are enumerated as single words, so DOUBLE-ENTRY would be shown as ‘(11)’.

21a  Vance and staff tense after capital issue (7)
You’ll probably be thinking of the right ‘Vance’ (unless you’re a serious Lucille Ball fan), but what he contributes (before deductions) is not his initials, rather the 2-letter abbreviation for his position. The remainder of the wordplay involves elements of 3, 1 and 2 letters, the last of these being an abbreviation from the world of printing.

23a  Perhaps EastEnders veteran lives in south-east (4)
The wordplay here has a 3-letter abbreviation being contained by a 2-letter one; the word ‘lives’ is an interloper and should be ignored.

28a  Crew briefly stood up welcoming farewell (7)
A 4-letter word which is truncated contains a 5-letter word which surrenders the extra letter.

29a  Staff unceasingly take control of pests (6)
The epithet ‘exclusionary’ would now be applied to this sense of the word comprising (originally) three letters which starts a charade. It is followed by a verb which means ‘to take into the mouth’ or ‘to take in through the senses’ which has lost its last letter, though I’m far from convinced that ‘unceasingly’ can reasonably indicate this. The definition would ideally be something more like ‘substance used for control of pests’.

30a  Times abandoning UK departure for special test after failure (5)
The mathematical symbol for ‘times’ is replaced by a single-letter abbreviation within a term which was first coined by Peter Wilding in 2012 and became omnipresent in 2016.

Down

1d  Decayed cowslip leaf split by extremes of rainfall (5)
The leaf in the ‘insert 2 into 4’ wordplay is not part of a plant, while the ‘decayed’ in the definition indicates that the answer is shown by Chambers as ‘archaic’.

2d  Standard to scowl receiving Irish blood-fine (9)
A word in plain view and a 4-letter verb/noun combine with a word which will be familiar to barred puzzle regulars (also a forename which links Monty Python, Cream and Ernie).

8d  Medical journal, forgetting Thursday’s flyer (6)
A (3,6) expression loses a pair of letters, then gives up the bonus letter.

12d  Irish police officer reversing in tracks adopts American speed trap devices (9, two words)
The difficulty here lies not in getting the answer but in fitting the elements of the wordplay together to produce it. The Irish police officer is the source of the extra letter, and the ‘track’ word can mean many things, including ‘a path made by animals’.

20d  Progress, rule and approve Scottish landholding system (6)
That ‘track’ word from 12d resurfaces here, with the sense of ‘to progress, esp smoothly and quickly’. There follows an abbreviation and an old-fashioned slang term that relates to liking and understanding something, particularly a piece of music or the crazy beat of Way-out Willie’s hand jive.

26d  Italian islander having drinks dry up when out of island (4)
The expression ‘drinks dry’ leads to a single word of six letters; ‘out of’ is used with its sense of ‘without, destitute or denuded of’.

Definitions in clues are underlined

We emerge with a full grid, together with the six words of the message. The ‘what to start with’ is clear, but when it comes to ‘what to iterate’, the first word must take on a meaning that it doesn’t actually have, and it needs to be followed by a comma. This second instruction needs to be iterated ad infinitum, which could take a while, but thankfully others have already done the work and identified the answer, ie ‘the conclusion of the trick’. When reference is made to ‘a successful alchemist’, what is really meant is ‘a solver who correctly followed the first instruction’. If in doubt in this sort of situation, a good bet is to look for exactly eight cells which contain the same letter. Joining these eight cells and highlighting eleven (two cells being in both groups) will represent the answer in two quite different ways.

There were some tricky clues, including a few which ‘pushed the envelope’ somewhat. The instructions for the endgame took a bit of deciphering, not helped by the setter’s insistence that we were performing alchemy when it was surely sacred geometry. Did those four years of Chemistry training help me? Nitric oxide.

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

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