Enigmatic Variations 1767 (Hints)
GREAT LEADERS by VISMUT
Hints and tips by Gabriel / Jpeg
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Gemini wasn’t much help this time – though it did cough up the homily that “Chambers (2016) is your Bible” (request to the editors: please work with the AI companies and make all your content available to them!). Interestingly it didn’t bother speculating about the identity of the great leaders (perhaps that’s too controversial in these times of hyper-polarisation – for instance, one person’s great leader is another person’s modern-day Hitler).
Preamble: Pairs of across clues are run together, always in the correct order. In one of the pairs, the wordplay leads to thematic entries but their definitions suggest GREAT LEADERS which must be written under the grid. In all other pairs, the last character of the leading clue and the first character following it indicate what solvers must draw eight lines through. By drawing a diagonal line through each of four non-thematic cells, solvers must connect the partnerships. Note that an anglicised name is used for one of the partners. Chambers (2016) is recommended.
Vismut has set us a puzzle with all the across clues being pairings. And the endgame also involves pairings of some sort (called partnerships). Luckily for us the down clues are normal and all but one of the across clues are too, once the dividing line for each is found.
Clues
Across
1 & 7 Criminal electronic language regularly browned off pastors (6; 4)
Recall one of the across pairings is special. The first wordplay is a 5-letter synonym followed by the usual abbreviation and the second involves alternate letters.
10 & 11 Blood loss from American horse, agree to be treated with hormone, but not 1 shot slays disease (10; 5)
Both clues in this pairing refer to medical situations and both are anagrams. American could have been Alaskan.
38 & 39 Cry for attention by section hiding first of argon salt alloys behind Mechanical Engineer’s brass and copper possibly (4; 6)
The first wordplay bamboozled me and I had to invoke the phone-a-friend option but it’s quite simple (ha!): take a 4-letter synonym for a small word, take a single-letter abbreviation (in the synonym) and replace it by another single-letter. The second wordplay is a 2-letter abbreviation (acronym?) followed by an anagram yielding a plural noun that both items in the definition can be.
Down
1 Georgian author, still live, drops mike (8)
Remove one letter from an adjective and follow it with a verb to get the name of an author from Georgia (the US state, not the country in the Caucasus).
5 French joint contracted with chemist (9)
The chemist we are looking for initially explained why some elements bond with others. To find him, combine an abbreviation, a body part with the last letter missing, and a conjunction.
9 Likewise Scottish eyes seducing Romeo’s woman (6)
This proper name is formed from a shortened word for something one might say when asking for the same thing as someone else followed by a three letter Scottishism, all with a one letter abbreviation in the middle.
19 Car cover’s not rocketing by university with insurance essentially taken out (7)
This noun which could also refer to the read part of a car can be formed by combining a reversed word, a preposition/adverb with its last letter removed, and a one-letter abbreviation.
25 Canine and German scientist nearly struggle up (7)
Combine a 1 letter abbreviation and the name of a scientist with the last letter missing to get this verb that one might use when scaling a cliff.
27 Tabloid’s bent grass in Alaska (6)
The underlining reveals this is a double definition. Alaska is just the US indicator.
Precisely figuring out where the pairings are divided is pretty important since that determines our message – which fortunately is in clue order and not muddled. The word “character” rather than “letter” in the preamble had me wondering and you’ll notice that there are a few numeric literals in the clues. Yes, hint hint. The message that emerges requires a tiny bit of imagination to convert into a complete phrase in English but it should lead you to the thematic material.
Overall, not too bad, but it took quite a bit of recondite research to figure out the theme. I needed some imaginative Google searching to find the partnerships and it was a heartwarming discovery. And once found, we were able to figure out the two definitions in the special across clue as to what “great leaders” refers to. You’ll note that the partnerships can be related “diagonally” in the grid with the same geometry for each.
Difficulty 2.5 / 5 (much endgame research required).
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