EV 1727 (Hints)

Enigmatic Variations 1727 (Hints)

Complete by Stick Insect

Hints and tips by Gabriel

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Having consulted our friend Gemini I was offered several candidate sets to consider: days of the week / months of the year, the seven dwarfs or seven deadly sins, noble gases or chemical elements, musical notes (do, re, mi…), planets in the solar system, greek alphabet letters. All sensible ideas. The kind of set that we will want is none of these but… well, you’ll see.

Preamble: Single-letter clashes occur in some cells; the letter which produces real words should be entered. Finally, letters in two other symmetrically placed cells must be changed to COMPLETE two sets. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended. 

The preamble seems to indicate that the clues are normal which means that we can just cold-solve and wait for the clashes to emerge. The preamble also tells us how to resolve clashes, so we expect no ambiguities to occur (that is, there is only one way to resolve a clash and produce real words). We also know that we need to produce two complete sets. Whatever that means.

Clues:
Across
18 African rhino — predator almost turning one to east (6)
My LOI (last-one-in). I had fixated on the male version of the predator (not a rhino!). Once you consider the female, the wordplay is a lot clearer.

24 Endeavour to keep the setter’s Latin in a good state (6)
The compiler/setter/author of a cryptic puzzle will often insert himself/herself self-referentially into a clue – in this case, together with the usual single-letter abbreviation inside a 3-letter synonym.

26 Conserve explosive footwear (5)
What I like to call a ddd – three definitions which of course the underlining reveals.

28 Damage no longer used appendix with gas (6)
Slightly tricky since there’s another similar  6-letter word that is a synonym of the first word of the definition.

31 Trump’s money trouble after bank’s closing (4)
I have never heard Trump nor any other American refer to money using this alternate spelling of a leafy vegetable that I don’t seek out.

41 Jewish leader tense, qadis upset about God (7)
The Jewish personage referred to here isn’t the usual Rabbi and I was unfamiliar with this particular transliteration. There are two single-letter abbreviations in the wordplay.

Down
7 In Arabia, ginn encounters repellent fish (8)
An unusual fish vocabulary-wise but hidden in plain sight.

9 See Bill mending road by a city in West India (8)
Not a city I was aware of (yes I know I should get out more). Wordplay starts with a single-letter Latin abbreviation + 2-letter abbreviation.

10 Break worn-out piece of armour others support (4)
Well, if you can have a ddd, why not a dddd?

25 Provisionally restoring property of note, conductor’s right to turn to student (8)
An archaic term in real estate whose definition in Chambers needed rereading a couple of times before I understood it. Wordplay is a two-letter note followed by a slightly mutilated 6-letter conductor who famously appeared on Morecambe and Wise.

Definitions in clues are underlined

Overall, the clues themselves aren’t very hard – most wordplays are solvable by mere mortals such as ourselves – however, it will become apparent that there are relatively lots of clashes. Nonetheless, at some point, you’ll note a shared quality about one letter of the clashing pair (namely, the one that satisfies the preamble).

Once you have established what the theme is, then you’ll start wondering how to construct two sets. This will require some logic (basically, process of elimination) to narrow down the potential changes. Symmetry will help once you have one of the two cells needed in this last step.

Finally, you’ll note that Gemini’s speculation about potential set semantics wasn’t that bad.

Toughness: 2 out of 5 on the difficulty scale.

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