Enigmatic Variations 1762 (Hints)
Onlookers by Ifor
Hints and tips by Phibs
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I didn’t feel there was much for Claude to get his virtual teeth into here, so I asked him, “What do solvers have to say about crosswords compiled by the setter Ifor?”
Edited highlights follow:
“Ifor is widely considered one of the tougher setters in these high-level series, rarely producing straightforward cryptics and almost always building in a multi-layered meta-theme, with cluing that is notoriously tight and fair but often requiring a high level of lateral thinking. One blogger even joked about asking an AI whether there was “good reason for trepidation” before tackling one of his puzzles [yes, that was me]. A recurring theme is that Ifor’s instructions/preambles take real effort to parse. One blogger noted that Ifor’s preambles usually require reading a few times before they are completely clear, adding wry appreciation once the logic clicked into place.
Overall, the solver community’s tone toward Ifor is one of respect bordering on good-natured intimidation: tough, cerebral, meta-theme-heavy puzzles that demand patience and often research, but which are consistently rated as fair, inventive, and highly satisfying once solved.”
Prepare yourselves to be intimidated by a meta-theme…
Preamble: Each clue is actually two clues run together. Either entry may be clued first; punctuation may mislead. Some answers are too short for their slots, and several others require two letters to occupy one cell; all enumerations count cells available. Cells in the latter group must each be divided by a diagonal line in a consistent way, entering one letter in each half such that entries read normally. Using the contents of these cells as a guide, solvers must insert an arrow in each vacant cell so that new words or phrases appropriate to the positions of the ONLOOKERS in the grid are symbolised. The Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended, but does not give the entry at 11 (in Collins and others).
Each clue is actually two clues run together, with no overlap. For example, in “Investigate special toilet paper on behalf of this setter (4;4)”, the break in the clue comes between ‘toilet’ and ‘paper’, the answer to the first sub-clue is SCAN (S + CAN), and the answer to the second is IFOR (I + FOR). Note that the answers can come in either order, so if this were the clue for 1/44 across, SCAN could be the entry at either 1a or 44a; once we have a few crossing answers we will be able to work out what goes where. Tricky enough for you? Claude would have been surprised if that had been the whole shebang, and it isn’t. ‘Some’ (comparison to the ‘several’ that follows suggests that this might mean ‘two’) answers will not completely fill the space available; it sounds as though they will be one letter too short for their grid entry, and we will need to leave a cell empty. ‘Several others’ (surely at least four!) will presumably be one letter too long, and two letters will have to share a cell; if two intersecting entries are both oversize, the split cell will be the one which they share. The preamble indicates that all cells will be divided using lines that run in the same direction, so unless all the split cells are unchecked and the overlong answers all run in the same direction (unlikely in an Ifor puzzle), the dividing line is going to be diagonal. If the letters are in the same order in intersecting entries (eg RHUBARB and CUSTARD), the line will run from top right to bottom left, with the first letter being placed in the NW corner and the second in the SE; if they are reversed in the second entry (eg STRAWBERRIES and CREAM), the line will run from top left to bottom right, with the first letter from the across entry in the SW and the second in the NE.
Across
12/41a Wooden dish missing socially acceptable / line in deep valley once mounted (5; 5)
The deep valley in part 2 is also an item essential for anyone seeking tonsorial neatness, while the answer is an archaic (‘once’) past tense of a familiar verb.
17/38a “Acting contrarily, couple abandoned exhausted sheep / heartlessly” heard on broadcast poll (5; 5)
The first wordplay is a charade of a single-letter abbreviation, a reversed three-letter word, and two letters selected from a word in the clue – but 1+3+2 ≠ 5… In the second part, ‘broadcast’ is an anagram indicator, although even after one word has lost its ‘heart’ there seems to be just a little too much fodder.
19/36a Nurses a recurrent fake / state of breathlessness before a meal, each following conclusion of heartburn (5; 5)
The second wordplay has a two-letter abbreviation of the Latin for ‘before food’ (so not postprandial) preceding another two-letter abbreviation which itself follows a single-letter selection.
22/32a Dead rough so far, for a / long time – ultimately, there’s the rub to remove (5; 5)
The obsolete (‘dead’) answer to part 1 starts with a common two-letter word for which I think the Chambers definition of ‘so far’ is an error – the word itself needs to be added on the end for it to make sense; the three-letter word that follows is often indicated in cryptics by ‘a’ alone.
Down
1/35d Pointed stick’s end caught by / young ferrets, hiding one active in trees (5; 5)
A tricky doublet, not made easier by the enumerations and answer lengths being different. In the first half, each word in the wordplay contributes separately to a 3+1+2 charade. In the second half, the key element is the four-letter word for young ferrets (polecats, foxes etc), and for what Airfix continues to supply to model makers.
6/27d Plant those in Scotland after lecturer bitten by rock / snakes is sadly palsied (7; 7)
The Scots word in part 1’s wordplay follows an abbreviation, the combo being swallowed by a two-letter word for the sort of scoriaceous volcanic rock that could come in handy when your car breaks down.
7/26d Organiser of crooked game ran / disreputable joints, reportedly those with debts (7; 7)
Part 2 is a homophone for a (3,5) expression – don’t make the mistake that I did initially by starting with a word which means ‘substandard’ rather than ‘disreputable’.
8/37d Duck parochial business meetings covering / brief spread of damage finally receding (4; 4)
In part 1, ‘parochial’ indicates that the answer is shown by Chambers as ‘dialect’, while I feel sure that the setter would have used ‘covers’ in preference to ‘covering’ had the surface reading allowed it.
9/34d Group of players get rid of / Root, perhaps pinching right to the strike (5; 5)
The double-definition that starts things off alerts us to a length mismatch which (as usual) carries through to part 2, where ‘Root’ (being Joe of that ilk) exemplifies a three-letter cricketing term. When you see something like ‘left on’ or ‘right to’ in an Ifor puzzle, there’s a good chance that it will indicate the selection of the first or last letter of the word which follows.
11/31d Male structure in Tehran foolishly / compounds idols, most of all overwhelming leader of Iran (5; 5)
The second answer here is the one that doesn’t appear in Chambers, and it is produced by replacing one letter of a word in the clue with two letters; the foregoing anagram clue will have made it clear that the answers here are oversize.
14/24d Elderly take heart from French in almost every jagged / mountain range abroad, climbing sharp edge surrounding base (6; 6)
‘Take heart from’ here doesn’t mean ‘be encouraged by’, rather ‘deprive of spirit’, and the obsolete (‘elderly’) answer comprises wordplay components of two and four letters. The word ‘jagged’ is used with the sense shown by Chambers as ‘US’. The principal wordplay element in part 2 is a five-letter word which I associate with a triangular wooden rail used in fencing.
Definitions in clues are underlined
Completing the initial grid-fill in an Ifor puzzle sometimes represents only, in Sir Winston’s words, ‘the end of the beginning’. But here, as long as you’ve divided the cells in the way described above, the struggle is almost over. You should be able to read off the two key names, whose Chambers entries will be helpful to anyone who is unfamiliar with them. You will need to be guided by the relative positions of those names in order to work out which way (in each instance towards a cardinal point) the arrows should be pointing (Ifor has set a trap for the unwary, as you will see if you try putting them the wrong way round). And that’s it – job done.
The challenge here was getting the answers into the grid, and some typically tricksy Iforian clues meant that the task was not a simple one. The endgame was brief but pleasing, and refreshingly did not require recourse to any reference beyond Chambers.
Phibs Toughness Rating: 🥾🥾🥾🥾 (Tough)
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