Enigmatic Variations 1754 (Hints)
Block Letters by Nudd
Hints and tips by Phibs
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Today the EV community extends a warm welcome to our new editor, the cruciverbal legend that is John Henderson (Elgar, Enigmatist, Io, and editor of the Inquisitor puzzle in the i newspaper); at the same time, we bid farewell to Steve Bartlett, who has been in the editorial seat since 2019 and has by my reckoning brought 373 puzzles to us during his seven-year tenure – I’m sure you will join me in thanking him for a sterling shift, in the course of which, along with editing many fine puzzles, he introduced these ‘hints and tips’ blogs. Thanks, too, on behalf of all EV setters: there’s no doubting that when many of those puzzles were received by Steve they were significantly less satisfactory than their polished, published forms.
I asked Claude a question about the current puzzle. I’d like to tell you what the question was, and how he replied, but I can’t.
Preamble: Each clue gives an answer of nine letters to be entered clockwise or anti clockwise around the numbered square, starting anywhere and with one letter of the word placed in the central square. The 24 unchecked perimeter/corner letters might give PAN A LATE SOLUTION OF BLOCKS. Several of these can be deduced from entries and the remaining few ambiguities can be resolved by consideration of the familiar pattern of BLOCK LETTERS revealed in the numbered squares. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.
We have an Eightsome Reels puzzle with a twist – each answer consists of nine letters, one of which goes into the relevant central cell. This is going to make things trickier than usual – even getting the answers for three reels that form an L-shape may not be enough to establish the shared groups of three letters, and it’s certain that we will find ourselves entering ‘bits’ of answers
When it comes to filling the grid, the clues have to be relatively straightforward in order to compensate for the initial lack of structure, so once you’ve got started things gradually become (at least a little) easier. To gain that initial toehold, one needs first of all to cold-solve the clues to two adjoining ‘reels’ – let’s assume that they are side by side, and the solutions are PARAMOUNT and MARSUPIAL. The three consecutive shared letters are RAM/MAR, so these must occupy the three shared cells. The fact that the shared letters are reversed in the second solution means that the entries will both run clockwise or both anticlockwise (if they were in the same sequence, eg MARSUPIAL/TRADEMARK, then one will run clockwise and the other anticlockwise). These examples give no clue as to the central letters, but if the answers were MARSUPIAL and PRURIENCE then the shared letters must be RUP/PUR and the letters in the centre of the reels must be S and R; once we established the direction of rotation from another overlapping entry, we could confidently enter both MARUPIAL and PURIENCE around the outside [in the current puzzle, 4 and 9 will prove to connect in this way]. Don’t forget that the entries are cyclic, so the overlap between REFLECTOR and CORRECTED could be ECT/ECT or ORR/ORR.
2 Plants, Scottish ones, contain an arrangement of bells
The ‘contain’ here really ought to be ‘containing’, because it is a single four-letter Scots word that is put around a five-letter one, and thus the verb would need to be in the singular.
5 Sandpipers’ relatives drop by frequently in southern States when flying back
A four-letter ‘drop’ (a word usually seen only in a (5,3,5) expression meaning ‘small quantities at a time’) and a two-letter abbreviation are inserted into two further abbreviations before the whole shebang is reversed.
11 Needing both hands, princess disposes of cordials
A four-letter Indian princess loses the abbreviation for one hand, while a seven-letter word meaning ‘disposes of’ (or, more commonly, ‘ comes to rest’) loses its sinister counterpart.
13 Cuckoo active from rarely seen love-making displays liveliness
A three-letter tropical American cuckoo particularly popular with crossword setters is followed by a seven-letter word, shown by Chambers as ‘rare’, from which a single-letter abbreviation has been removed.
14 Leaving first, man of courage looked around and led the way
There’s an ‘invisicomma’ here between ‘courage’ and ‘looked’, because a four-letter word deprived of its first letter has a six-letter word for ‘looked’ put around it.
15 Cut around paravane and blubbered
Looking up ‘paravane’ in Chambers will reveal the five-letter word which is contained by a four-letter word meaning ‘[to] cut’, the use of which now seems to be confined to horticulture; it could be indicated cryptically by ‘backing studies’.
16 Wearing down asteroid left behind Scottish island
This isn’t easy. The name of an asteroid discovered in 1898 (and of the Greek love-god) is followed by a four-letter island in the Inner Hebrides and the abbreviation for ‘left’ previously seen in 11.
17 F1 champ chomped portion of sautéed glands
The surname of the former Formula 1 champ remembered particularly for his rivalry with Ayrton Senna is followed by a three-letter word and a single-letter taken from a word in the clue – though I’m not sure why ‘portion’ should indicate the first letter of a word rather than any other letter or group of letters.
18 Tsetse flies biting unlimited Roman Catholic supporters of state control
Here the cryptic reading requires a comma to be mentally inserted between ‘flies’ and ‘biting’, since it involves an anagram being placed outside a five-letter word deprived of its first and last letters.
24 French chalk absorbing oxygen drains depth of colour
This time the comma (or the word ‘with’) is missing between ‘oxygen’ and ‘drains’, a single letter being ‘absorbed’ by a four-letter word which is followed by another word of the same length.
25 Guards senator near point on outskirts of Las Vegas
This 3+4+2 charade involves an abbreviation and a selection of two letters. The words ‘near’, ‘on’ and ‘Vegas’ can all be ignored.
Definitions in clues are underlined
Having filled most of the grid, either you will recognize the block which is emerging or a web search will quickly identify the pattern of letters with a claim to be the world’s first crossword. Completing the numbered cells will allow you to resolve all remaining ambiguities. Make a final check of the unch message against the 20 perimeter cells adjoining a bar plus the four corner cells, and it’s job done.
The difficulty here lay in cold-solving enough clues to enable population of the central area of the grid, thereby filling sufficient numbered cells to work out the theme. The question I asked Claude was, “In a themed crossword, we are asked to find the letters which make up a 5×5 square. We are told that they form a familiar pattern of ‘block letters’. Can you suggest what they might be?” He got the answer spot-on – it’s a gold star for Claude this week!
Phibs Toughness Rating : 🥾🥾🥾/🥾🥾🥾🥾 (One for the more experienced solvers of themed puzzles)
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