EV 1673 (Hints)

Enigmatic Variations 1673 (Hints)

No Prize by Chalicea

Hints and tips by Phibs

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A search on Dave Hennings’ database at xwdb.info reveals that Chalicea has had 161 puzzles published in the Listener/EV/IQ weekly series and the monthly Crossword/Magpie magazines. A further 18 by her alter ego Curmudgeon take the total up to 179, so I make this number 180, an achievement of truly Phil Taylor-esque proportions.

Those who have found some of the recent EVs pretty chewy will take comfort from seeing Chalicea’s name; her puzzles are intended to be suitable for solvers of all levels, with clues at the easier end of the difficulty spectrum (albeit often made a little harder through the use of gimmicks) and grids which are packed with thematic material.

Preamble: The wordplay of every clue leads to an extra letter in addition to those needed for the answer. Read in clue order, these give the words on the tombstone of 10, winner of NO PRIZE, who discovered 18 and 11,31, and after whom 32 is named. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.

We can generally expect succinct preambles from Chalicea, and this one is suitably snappy. The wordplay in every clue delivers a bonus letter – so if the clue were “Dark old tablet (6)”, the answer would be OPAQUE [O + PLAQUE], the extra letter being L. Method: solve clue, write extra letter beside clue, repeat.

Across

4a  Sleeping partner sadly ignoring exceptional ringer for instrument (8, two words)
Convention dictates that in subtractive anagram clues, [X* – Y*], two anagram indicators are required, and that is what we have here in ‘sadly’ and ‘exceptional’. The instrument will probably be more familiar under a name having the same first word (of five letters) but sounding overall more musical and less culinary.

9a  Exercises with the river machine for grinding polishing wheel for stones (10)
It might look as though a couple of the words in the (2+1+3+1+4) wordplay are redundant, but they all have an active contribution to make. Don’t forget that in barred puzzles such as the EV hyphenated answers are enumerated as single words, so CLUED-UP would be shown as ‘(7)’.

14a  Old townsmen report initially on singular lemon-like fruit (7)
The biggest chunk of the four-part wordplay here is delivered by the ‘old townsmen’, the plural of an archaic slang term of contempt for what Dr Johnson described as “A pert low townsman; a pragmatical trader”. It is a contraction of a more familiar, and wholly inoffensive, word.

17a  Political correctness over measuring apparatus shunning a bony swimmer (5)
There are three distinct elements in this wordplay, the key to which is knowing that Chambers gives an alternative spelling for all meanings of the word for a ‘measuring apparatus’ which is usually spelt with five letters including a U (although the four-letter variant here is in reality only seen these days in a nautical context). Having reduced the third part as directed and assembled the six letters, even if you don’t know which five make up the answer, there are only two possibilities to check.

33a  Change inherent features of a torturous route east of cave (8)
You might wonder whether ‘tortuous’ would be preferable to ‘torturous’ as an anagram indicator, but in fact the latter is equally apposite, given the figurative sense given by the OED of “Involving perversion or violent dislocation (of words, etc.)”. The ‘east’ is here indicating the position of two wordplay elements relative to the ‘cave’ or ‘lair’.

Down

4d  Foolish wagerers lacking energy in poet’s heaven (6)
Not a hard clue to parse, ‘foolish’ being an anagram indicator, but you may need a couple of checkers before you can identify the answer, an uncommon spelling used as the title of a poem by Robert Southey, and thence the extra letter.

7d  Dumplings I fed to child casually, starter from Indian (6)
The ‘casually’ here indicates that the required five-letter word for a child is (decidedly) informal.

12d  Most of crowd with constant system of sharing bonuses (5)
The answer might be unfamiliar unless you have worked the tables in a brasserie, but if you put ‘most of’ a six-letter word for a crowd in front of a single-letter abbreviation, the options for the required five are limited.

15d  Entirely concerned with wrong originally overlooked (6, two words)
The wordplay involves a charade of three elements in a 2+4+1 pattern.

21d  Invitation to enter clue oddly, ordinary people accepting one (6, two words)
There are only six letters in the answer here, but they derive from four wordplay elements including a single-letter abbreviation.

Definitions in clues are underlined

Once most of the clues are solved, the epitaph should become clear, as should the 18/31 entries. If you can’t readily identify the name at 10, googling either of the foregoing (or, for that matter, 18) will tell you all you need to know in order to complete the unclued entries.

The clueing gimmick, combined with the high proportion of unches in some entries due to the unclued lights, made the grid fill a little tricky in places. Once it was possible to work out the epitaph or any of the unclued entries, though, the finishing line was in sight.

Phibs Toughness Rating : 🥾🥾 (Suitable for all)

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