Enigmatic Variations 1746 (Hints)
In Part by Miles
Hints and tips by Phibs
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I was at school with Tony Miles, who went on to become the first UK-born over-the-board chess grandmaster, in the process winning the £5,000 prize put up by Jim Slater.
There was a certain disparity in our chess skills, but I did once get to face him, after we had been drawn to play each other in the school’s (slightly unfortunately named) Pugh Cup. I should like to report an extraordinary feat of giant-killing, but the mismatch ended in predictable fashion. I’m not aware of Tony being a crossword aficionado, but the nom de guerre that he went by on the Internet Chess Club, “It’s Only Me”, suggested that he knew a bit about anagrams. Could today’s setter have chosen their pseudonym in homage to Tony? I suspect not.
Preamble: For 10 clues the entry is either the answer IN PART or vice versa (five cases of each), and in each of these clues an extra word, to be removed before solving, provides another version of one of these entries. In each of the remaining 24 clues an extra letter, which is not to be entered, is indicated by the wordplay; in clue order, these letters provide a message from which solvers can find a further trio to be written beneath the grid. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.
Every clue features a gimmick of some kind – in ten clues there is an extra word which must be removed before the clue can properly be solved; the answers to these clues will clearly have to be treated in some way prior to entry in the grid. In the remaining 24 clues, the wordplay delivers an extra letter which is not part of the answer. So if a clue were “He sets jaws and leaves (5)”, the wordplay gives MIBLES (MANDIBLES without AND), the answer is MILES, and the extra letter is B. As the message emerges, we may be able to identify the bonus letters delivered by any wordplays that we haven’t yet managed to fully work out (which can easily happen with this particular gimmick).
I will be marking the ‘extra word’ clues as I come across them, putting a ring round the clue number, drawing a little box round the extra word, and writing the answer next to the clue. Since there is no mention of entry lengths in the preamble, it would appear that the length of the answer to each of these clues matches the number in brackets that follows it. It sounds as though the extra words will be useful when completing the ten non-standard entries, but we need to bear in mind that each one provides another version of ‘one of these entries‘, so apparently not always (and maybe not ever) the entry to which the clue refers.
Across
5a Pester swindler to conceal date in record of transactions (6)
One where you probably need to work back from the familiar six-letter word indicated by the definition, remove a single-letter abbreviation, and check the resulting word in Chambers (it’s ‘obsolete slang’). The extra word can then be confidently identified.
10a Fraxinus, cuckoo pint, wild ginger (6)
A charade of a three-letter (before deductions) word and a four-letter one which you might associate with a particular sort of lily.
16a Innocent people in general cower receiving painful blow (5)
The ‘people in general’ are ‘you and I’ when put another way. I can’t find any evidence in Chambers that the blow is necessarily a painful one; an alternative indication would be ‘success’. The extra word is well concealed but still stands out because it is so rarely seen in cryptic wordplays.
18a Convict with information about Ms Malone getting back warts (11)
A three-letter slang term and a four-letter plural often treated as a singular contain a reversal of a five-letter (gross) diminutive name associated with a Hibernian wheeler-dealer.
26a Feeling of loss large missing acting, having retired earlier (6)
A five-letter word suffering a single-letter loss follows a three-letter abbreviation, similarly depleted by the time the answer is arrived at.
27a Previously name two central characters on WWW (4)
If you mentally replace ‘on’ with ‘of the alphabet, following’ things will become clearer, although ‘WWW’ and the three-letter word involved here are not synonymous. The ‘previously’ in the definition is there because the answer is shown by Chambers as ‘obsolete’.
29a Czech composer entertaining very old king in secret (6)
This is an ‘extra letter’ clue, but ‘entertaining’ needs to be removed before solving it, since it doesn’t work in combination with ‘in’ (the clue would need to read “…in secret entertaining very old king”). Three single-letter abbreviations and a four-letter (to start with) adjective are involved in the wordplay.
30a Comment ripely about Aerosmith band member (6)
Again the extra word rather sticks out, and both the straightforward wordplay (once that bonus word has been removed) and the fact that Aerosmith has only five members make this a good potential route into the endgame.
Down
1d Rudimentary feathered scarf poorly cut (5)
A charade of a three-letter (to start with) word and a four-letter one deprived of its last letter.
11d Inexpertly performed unknown in Lost (9)
A slightly unusual ‘wordplay delivers extra letter’ clue in that a single letter effectively replaces another letter in a nine-letter word, the displaced letter becoming part of the message.
14d Elevated funny person’s interlacing material (4)
The ‘funny person’ might nowadays be called a scream, but in the middle part of the last century they might equally well have been described by the similar word involved here.
17d Königsberg’s 7 features German dolly amongst female union members (7)
Once more the extra word is not hard to find, but the answer is probably easier to get from the definition than the wordplay, unless you twig to the slightly whimsical indication of the key element in the latter.
19d Fire consumes a drying house (4)
Although the answer here is a kiln rather than a house, the definition is probably the best route to the answer. The four-letter word loosely corresponding to ‘fire’ in a Lord Sugar sense contributes its second letter to the message.
20d Predominantly marine organisms a bird picked up (5)
The five-letter bird that gets ‘picked up’ is a big, raptorial one. Based on the first Chambers definition of the answer, the word ‘predominantly’ really shouldn’t be there; at some point, though, you will understand why it is.
21d Perhaps Richard is finally tense in steep rock face creep (5)
There are two ways to read this clue, both yielding the same answer. One leaves you with the surname of a Leicester Tigers rugby player, while the intended (I assume) reading has a single-letter abbreviation replacing the last letter in the first name of a famous ‘Richard’ (think popular music, but not ‘Little’), the answer being an old spelling of a familiar word.
25d Bud of old seed in park ascending (4)
The three-letter (initially) word that is ‘ascending’ within an abbreviation describes a ‘seed’ of the human offspring kind.
Definitions in clues are underlined
As the solve progresses, you may notice how the extra words could be used to fill in some of the gaps, at which point you will also see a correspondence between their lengths and the lengths of those entries. If you have the answer to the clue for such an entry, the theme may start to make sense (with or without a little googling). The ‘further trio’ from the message should confirm your suspicions/suppositions, and you may (like me) find yourself with a full grid despite not having solved all of the clues.
The problem with a puzzle like this is that if the clues for the answers to be modified are on the easy side, the game will be given away at an early stage, but if they are relatively difficult, it’s likely that the dénouement will be followed by a ‘mopping up’ exercise on the unsolved ones.
Phibs Toughness Rating : 🥾🥾🥾 (Suitable for all except those new to barred puzzles)
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