EV 1709 (Hints)

Enigmatic Variations 1709 (Hints)

Roundabout by Chalicea

Hints and tips by Gabriel

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Chalicea sets tidy and enjoyable puzzles whose denouement often involves the eponymous Chalicean Stripe (if not trademarked yet, deserves to be). I wonder if that will be the case this time – the title doesn’t really inspire anything involving straight lines though.

Preamble: Beginning at the circled cell, two inscriptions go round the grid in a clockwise direction. Solvers must highlight a third ROUNDABOUT example in the grid (20 letters). Misprints appear in the definition parts of eight clues. The correct letters, read in clue order, will tell solvers where to find these inscriptions. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended. 

Consulting Gemini was both somewhat helpful and amusing.  It tried to produce an example of a clue with a misprint and came up with: “For example, if the clue is “Small animal to make a goot noise” and the answer is “SQUEAK,” the misprint is ‘o’ in ‘goot,’ which should be ‘o’ to spell ‘good.’ The corrected letter is ‘o.’” Certainly it deserves some points for effort. That was the amusing contribution.

Actually helpful was this: “The preamble states they go ‘round the grid in a clockwise direction,’ starting at the circled cell.”  I hadn’t noticed there was a circled cell in the grid. 

Clues:
Across
24 Ponder on origin of the dramatic gap in thicket (5)
An unusual answer, archaic and attributed to a certain famous playwright which is “dramatically” noted.  Wordplay is a 4-letter synonym followed by a single letter clearly signposted.

27 Cultivate squads for minor-league sports clubs (9, two words)
I know something about baseball (warming editorial content ahead: it’s incredibly boring) which helped me to understand this clue.

40 Malaysian forest tribes‘ sloth following fermented rice drink mostly (5)
I admit I found the answer by searching Chambers for the first two words and then reverse engineering: the obvious truncated rice drink followed by the two-letter sloth that is standard cryptic fare. Note the careful underlining.

Down 

1 Not oddly let up on usage producing mnemonic of variable psalm tones (6)
Believe the wordplay and then check in Chambers!

28 Cases of endless mud in backward area reserved for building (5)
Last clue solved so must be worthy of a hint. The definition is a familiar crossword term for sewing cases. “Endless” when used as an indicator is ambiguous – both ends or just one end? And there’s a clear reversal indicator as well.

29 Sporty activities turning up involving piano music and film separately recorded (6)
Wordplay is the usual single letter abbreviation inside a reversal.  And yet another new term I was introduced to.

Definitions in clues are underlined

As you just saw, there are very few clues that warranted hints. As Gemini noted “the Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended” part is a strong hint that some of the answers may be obscure”. Indeed several unusual answers challenged my vocabulary but mostly always with very accessible wordplay thus obviating the need for additional explanation.

One of the peripheral messages popped out for me pretty quickly (I’ve often used/overused it as a great way to give credit to people). The other inscription isn’t in English and for that matter not in Latin and I needed some pretty straightforward wiki-research. Reminded me of an old Cream song on their first LP, side 2, track 4, which might help solvers of a certain generation.

The title usefully hints at the shape of what needs to be highlighted, namely, our third example – presumably an inscription. Up to you to decide whether the Chalicean Stripe played a role nonetheless.

Toughness: 1.5 out of 5 on the difficulty scale. You may note that we’ve shifted to a 5-point scale which affords finer grained calibration.

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