EV 1698 (Hints)

Enigmatic Variations 1698 (Hints)

Blanks by Eclogue

Hints and tips by Phibs

+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +

Between the title and the preamble there’s not a lot to go on, but I thought I’d see what ChatGPT could come up with. I asked, “A themed crossword puzzle asks us to identify a text containing an often repeated word. Can you suggest any possible texts?”

The response was rapid and chirpy;

“Certainly! If you’re looking for a text that contains an often repeated word, especially in the context of a themed crossword puzzle, here are some famous examples that might fit:

1. “Green Eggs and Ham” by Dr. Seuss – Repeated Word: “Sam” (as in Sam-I-Am) or “green”, “eggs”, “ham”. Known for its heavy repetition and limited vocabulary.

2. “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe – Repeated Word: “Nevermore”. The word “nevermore” is hauntingly repeated by the raven throughout the poem.

3. “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr. – Repeated Phrase: “I have a dream”. Very thematic, and excellent for word-based puzzles.

4. The Bible (certain passages) – Repeated Words: For example, in Psalm 136, “His mercy endures forever” is repeated in every verse.

5. “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman – Repeated Word/Phrase: Words like “I” and “myself”, and certain lines are thematically echoed.

6. “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg – Repeated Word: “who” (especially in the first section). The poem starts many lines with “who…”

7. “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks – Repeated Word: “We”. The word “We” begins many of the lines.”

A distinct US bias, presumably something to do with tariffs, but otherwise an interesting selection.

Preamble: Wordplay in each clue which does not involve theme-words or their variations generates an extra letter; read in clue order, these provide a description of a text and its often repeated word. The completion of the unclued BLANKS must be deduced. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.

A familiar gimmick, and possibly my least favourite – every wordplay leads to an extra letter that is not part of the answer. So if the clue were “English mutt adopted by pointer and setter (7)”, the wordplay gives E + (DOG in CLUE), the answer is ECLOGUE, and the extra letter is D. Note that some setters (myself included) would consider this clue unsound because of the link word ‘and’ between the wordplay and the definition – this implies that the two sides of the equation come to the same thing, but one yields ECLDOGUE and the other ECLOGUE. This view is by no means universally held, though, so don’t be surprised to find link words in this type of clue.

We appear to have four theme words (of 3, 4, 3, and 8 letters), and two variations on each. It may well be worth noting the positions of the theme words themselves in the grid to help us see what might be emerging there.

Across

12a    Patriarch’s head movement that’s surprising (4)
A 3 (originally) + 2 charade, the second part of which is along the lines of ‘that hurts’ for OW!. The patriarch is a specific one, invariably known by a single name, who lived to the ripe old age of 950.

22a  Pale Frenchmen with American cardigan from the past (6)
This one starts out as a 3+2+2 charade, the 2-letter elements both being abbreviations. The answer is shown by Chambers as being ‘old’, hence the ‘from the past’; it is also shown as being American, but that is not indicated – the ‘American’ in the clue belongs to the wordplay.

25a  Grotesque comic character charges amid flanks of enemy (11)
Another charade, this one comprising elements of 5, 5 (originally), and 2 letters, the last of these taking the form of a letter selection from a word in plain view. Some solvers may not be familiar with the character, but the etymology in Chambers for a prefix that forms the first six letters of the answer makes specific reference to him.

27a  Moved quickly to surpass armed group (4)
A 3+2 charade, where the first part surrenders the extra letter. The second element is an abbreviation for a group often indicated by ‘senior service’.

32a  Porter, say, with bovine in Australia showing inability to read (6)
There is one barred crossword editor who will not accept shortened forms of 2-letter words where one letter has been replaced by an apostrophe, specifically o’ for ‘of’ or ‘on’, and the similar one that constitutes the third element of the 3+2+1+1 wordplay here. I’m not keen on them either, since using (say) ‘of’ for O seems akin to using ‘an’ for A, which is more widely considered unacceptable.

35a  Improvised notice to get hair cut (5, two words)
The two elements of the wordplay lead to the two words of the answer, but the second suffers two single letter deductions prior to entry in the grid.

Down

3d  Shoot sailor following order (6)
A 3-letter (to start with) word follows a 4-letter verb.

4d  Japanese address on time for aged Scot (5)
The first half of the wordplay involves ‘a Japanese title or form of address equivalent to Mr or Mrs, placed after the name’. You might think that there was no need to indicate that the Scot named here was ‘old’, but there is a main Chambers entry for the word, and it is now shown as ‘obsolete’ (in earlier editions of Chambers it was classified as ‘informal’).

8d  Literary heroine now and then pens letters (5)
Cryptic solvers only normally need to know two ‘literary heroines’ – Jane Austen’s Emma and the one here, created by Thomas Hardy. An expert clue writer of my acquaintance believes that alternate letter selection indicators cannot reasonably be applied to a single 4-letter word, but he didn’t write this clue.

13d  Oval getting a pair of ducks by the same local girl (6)
In the words of Bruce Forsyth on Play Your Cards Right, “You get nothing for a pair”. The two letters representing that pair of nothings are followed by a 2-letter abbreviation of a Latin word, and the sort of lass for whom (along with Gene Kelly) the bells were ringing.

18d Hide English graduate in bygone fleapit, perhaps (6)
The word ‘hide’ is a noun in the cryptic reading of the clue, and it is followed by two abbreviations, the first of one letter and the second of two letters.

20d  Eats energy with surges initially (6)
As in 18d, the first word is to be treated as a noun, while the wordplay leads to a 3-letter (originally) word, another 3-letter word, and a single letter.

21d  Ed’s poetic irritation not out with the old once up north (7)
An abbreviation from the world of cricket is followed by an archaic pronoun and a ‘Scot and N Eng’ form of a word in the clue.

24d  Bishop headgear upset Jewish deed (5)
Bishops come in 1-letter and 2-letter varieties, while headgear can be singular or plural. Here we have the 2-letter bishop (abbreviated from his title), and multiple items of headgear.

28d In Maui, spread Hawaiian garland in middle of room (4)
When I started doing crosswords (a very long time ago!), two of the first words I learnt from the special vocabulary of cryptics were the verb meaning ‘to soak’ at 34a and the Hawaiian garland here, which starts off with three letters. The qualifier ‘In Maui’ is there simply to indicate that the definition refers to a US sense of the answer, a shortened form of a 13-letter word under whose entry in Chambers the required meaning can be found.

Definitions in clues are underlined

The combination of the emerging theme words and the message from the extra letters will surely lead you to the theme, with the variation C1 being an extra nudge in the right direction. I would expect all solvers to be familiar with the text, which should make filling any gaps in the theme words straightforward. It should be clear what you are looking for in the terms of the variations, although one or two (D2 in particular) may require a confirmatory visit to the dictionary. No highlighting or grid changes are required, so that’s job done.

Some of the clues were quite tricky, and having 12 unclued entries added to the difficulty, although this was balanced out to a degree by the unching being well below the maximum allowed. Once the theme had been identified, everything fell readily into place.

Phibs Toughness Rating : 🥾🥾🥾 (Not suitable for absolute beginners but far from impenetrable)

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