Enigmatic Variations 1737 (Hints)
What He Said by Vismut
Hints and tips by Gabriel
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Our friend(s) Gemini claimed that the “commonality” is Vismut (the setter’s name and the nordic name for Bismuth), namely “Bi” in the periodic table. So clearly, the quote is something like “To be or not to be”. Moreover, the representation of “what I’ll do no matter” is almost certainly a reference to the famous quote by Patrick Henry. “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
Suffice it to say, no chemicals nor American revolutionaries are involved in the solution – though the timeframe of the latter is roughly aligned.
Preamble: An appropriate symbol replaces part of the grid entry for two clues. Every other clue has an extra word to be removed before solving, the first and last letter of these form two columns to be read in clue order. For the across clues the first column spells out part of a quotation (in ODQ); Vismut has something in common with WHAT HE SAID in its previous four words which hints at how solvers should follow the instruction given by the second column. For the down clues the first column gives the unchecked letters in five theme words and the second an instruction to get the speaker’s name into the grid, creating real-word crossing entries. Referring to the rest of the quote, highlight a representation of what I’ll do no matter what the alternative (nine cells). Enumerations show grid space available. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.
I didn’t read the instructions carefully and interpreted “every other clue” to mean “alternating clues”. Oh well. Note to self: read preambles more carefully.
Of course, take note of the comment about grid space – this invariably means that some clues won’t fit in the grid: too long/short for space available.
Clues:
Across
10 Sorrowful sentimentality from half-cut wrong’un (3)
The wordplay required phone-a-friend: half of a left-leaning cricket term – I wanted to make a joke about the company I once worked for but the spelling is slightly different. Given the underlining, the interloper is obvious.
16 Engraved fish rod catches slippery eels at first (6)
For some reason, this clue proved tough to resolve: anyway, the wordplay is just a 4-letter synonym containing two initials – turns out that the 4-letter synonym’s first letter can be changed and produce the same definition.
21 Announce bush pilot’s flying, but not returning to Brisbane (7)
At first I assumed we needed to find an Australian term. I was wrong. The wordplay is an anagram whose fodder needs a short word to be removed first, once it’s been reversed.
23 Make-up catalogue to select with page moved forward (5)
To produce the answer, concatenate two 4-letter synonyms and then move the obvious single-letter abbreviation. You do the math.
24 Angry about lies circulating in old transept (6, two words)
Answer is a 5-letter synonym followed by a single-letter abbreviation and an anagram. Do the math again.
27 An age leaving coastal town earlier, I am in dizzy state (4)
I found this hard to crack – it ends up being rather clever: take a 7-letter proper noun (knowledge of English geography and/or knowing how to use the internet will come in handy here) and literally remove from it two words from the clue and then append the obvious two-letter abbreviation.
31 Short Swede – fat god (3)
This was my FOI (first one in) which means I immediately knew the alternating pattern. I had misinterpreted the preamble – there is no alternating pattern.
Down
5 Flowering black dierama cut from turn (3)
Remove a single letter abbreviation from a 4-letter synonym. I’m only annotating this since I think this was my LOI.
6 Cry of Eric Bird, sad having to abandon wife and whiskey (7)
The answer is a gerund and note that both wife and whiskey have the same abbreviation. The underlining reveals the extra word.
17 Before a meal and fruit, pop Josie up (6)
The wordplay is 2-letter abbreviation for a Latin term followed by 4-letter synonym. Recall that setters like inserting interlopers misleadingly – but here the underlining makes it obvious.
18 Southern university students on little vacation work out casually (4)
Just noting that “vacation” can indicate “vacating”, i.e. emptying, contents.
20 Oryx like grain of soldiers sacking Troy (7)
The underlining will reveal the likely extra word – I backed into this by interpolating the message – we’ll need to remove the usual single letter abbreviation from the fodder.
22 19 peeled orange for Scot (3)
Sometimes (often!) a number in a clue really does refer to another clue.
26 Timber’s sounder pitprop diameter (5)
It took me a bit to deconstruct the wordplay and work out the extra word: “sounder” doesn’t indicate a homophone and the answer ends in the obvious single letter abbreviation.
Definitions in clues are underlined.
There are two main challenges in the initial grid fill: identifying the imposter in virtually all the clues and identifying the two unusual clues and mutilating them appropriately.
I started tracking the columns and noticed that messages were emerging and managed to guess the interpolations. After some point, I found myself oscillating between guessing the extra words to construct the likely messages and using the likely answers to find the extra words. Once I had convincingly identified the columnar messages I was left with two orphans in the acrosses – which resolved the “previous four words” and directed me to the two clues requiring an “appropriate symbol”. Now the real work begins – the theme is explicitly declared and given the perimeter is unclued, there’s some toil required to resolve it thematically. I will say that the answers to the two orphaned acrosses are longer than their lights.
Figuring out how to fill in the unclear perimeter is strongly hinted at by two of the columnar messages. It will take some elbow grease and logic to leaf through Chambers to find the five appropriately synonymous thematic terms. Look above the symbols you’ve used in order to produce the “alternative”. You’ll need the second half of the previous line in the quotation as a hint.
Finally, our speaker, who you’ll know already given the quotation, is helpfully symmetrically disposed. Quite a workout – a challenging endgame with some difficult clues. Finding the pretty obscure thematic words in the perimeter wasn’t easy and to be honest the columnar message that was supposed to help wasn’t that useful.
Toughness: 4 out of 5 on the difficulty scale.
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This one required several sessions and, even for Vismut, was pretty taxing. Tackling the clues I ended up with 3 neighbourly recalcitrants of which 2 eventually emerged as the ones requiring modification. The five theme words were, with one exception, somewhat obscure and deciding where to start was part of the difficulty. Working backwards proved useful. The rest was not too tricky if one looked for a certain symmetry in the finished product. Quite a workout.
Thanks to Vismut and Gabriel.