EV 1719 (Hints)

Enigmatic Variations 1719 (Hints)

Inspired by Skylark

Hints and tips by Gabriel / Jpeg

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Skylark apparently has set an inspired puzzle for us. Is AI inspired by the preamble? Unfortunately for us, Gemini’s response was not particularly inspiring, just suggesting that A and B are major cultural figures and that A’s name is 19 letters long. I have my doubts about that. Let’s see if the clues can provide some inspiration.

Preamble: A misprint in the wordplay part of 19 clues must be corrected before solving. Corrections in clue order hint at A, who appears in the initial grid. In one important aspect A was INSPIRED by B, who should replace A in the grid. An extra letter must be removed from each remaining clue before solving; in clue order these describe B and hint at what should be highlighted, involving 19 cells. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended; 11 is in Collins. 

The Collins dictionary joins my shelf of unowned dictionaries (which includes OED and for that matter all the others except for Chambers) but is available online at the obvious collinsdictionary.com. The instructions tell us how many clues need correction while the rest have an extra letter. So, given a clue, while we don’t know which class it belongs to, at least once we have the corrections/extras we can read off A and B directly.

Clues:
Across
1 Musical school master, initially repelling fracas inside, to keep safe (13)
The 13 letter clues on the boundaries are extremely helpful to finding a way into this puzzle. For this one, we are looking for a word of continental origin. The wordplay involves containing a charade of a letter and a reversed word inside of a longer verb. Remember about the two groups of clues from the preamble so the letter in question might not be the one you are expecting!

11 Blend, accepting cute colour, scrubbing old measure of illuminance (8)
Google searching was able to identify possible words for the definition and easy enough to confirm via the online Collins. The wordplay was a bit trickier, requiring an anagram contained inside a short verb. But what exactly is the anagram indicator?

15 Inattentive adult cuts rate back (4)
For this definition sometimes we add the word “to” afterwards. The main challenge we ran into with the wordplay, a letter contained in a reversed word, was getting the wrong origin for the reversed word given the two possible groups of clues. We were thinking of those who might cut (or raise) rates!

35 Celtic goddess‘s power splitting vast axe before (5)
Celtic mythology is not one of our strong suits but enough crossing letters eventually helped us to figure out the goddess in question. The wordplay requires containing a 1-letter abbreviation inside a charade of a short word and another abbreviation. It took a while to figure out the error in the clue though.

40 Malle’s avoiding disabling directing (6)
Don’t be misled by the director Louis Malle – we need to find an imposter to remove and then further remove a 1-letter abbreviation from a 7-letter synonym.

43 Ant notices on vacation small hotels (4)
We deduced the definition but struggled with the wordplay. It is a charade of a short word and a pair of letters from a gutted word. The short word both requires knowing how to manipulate the clue and certain rules for cryptic word equivalences for a group of typically short words that we use a lot daily but don’t think of as synonyms.

Down
2 Morag’s bills just beneath overturned boxes (4)
The definition has a location indicator. The wordplay stumped us for a bit because we forgot about the clue manipulations. But there are both containment and reversal indicators.

7 Holly abruptly accepted carton, regarding part of the intestine (5)
Our guess to the definition led us to an incorrect letter, which made identifying the clue error more difficult than it should have been. We are looking wordplay-wise for a truncated word for a genus followed by two one-letter abbreviations.

19 One chasing US University for compound (6)
Another clue where the error slowed us down. The university in question is noteworthy for engineering and it is contained in a word commonly used in cryptic crosswords, often in clues to get to a one-letter abbreviation.

23 Snubbed mature relatives (3)
The original clue surface reads a lot better than the mutilated reading.  The wordplay requires us to remove a letter (“snubbed”) from a 4-letter synonym.

26 Will’s madness is cuckoo, breaking winches above earth (7)
We all know that there’s only one Will in cryptic-land. Need to find the imposter and then find a 3-letter abbreviation for the result. The rest of the wordplay is a common 3-letter crossword-synonym for a bird and then a single letter abbreviation. Since this is a down clue, “above” serves as a placement indicator.

Definitions in clues are underlined.

Now that that’s all solved the really tricky part begins. If you got the right group of letters for A you should be able to figure out to whom that refers and to find A in the grid. You should also be able to figure out B. The really tricky part is what to highlight. That stumped us for quite a while.  Note that Gemini’s guess about (pop) culture wasn’t far off actually.  Also, if you look up the term associated strongly with B in Chambers you’ll find a satisfactory resolution.

Toughness: 3.5 out of 5 on the difficulty scale.

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