Enigmatic Variations 1683 (Hints)
Parking Offence by Chalicea
Hints and tips by Gabriel
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Chalicea is another prolific setter encountered in all the usual places. For instance, in the Magpie series where she invariably sets at the A-grade level. This typically indicates fewer degrees of freedom and an accessible endgame that doesn’t suffer from GWIT (“guess what I’m thinking”). This puzzle is no exception.
In true Phibs style, I told Gemini: “in a thematic crossword puzzle, we are asked to identify a parking offence and the person performing it” to which they responded laconically with:
“Offence: OVERTIME
Person: METERFEEDER (someone adding money to extend time)”.
Was that helpful? You decide.
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Enigmatic Variations 1681 (Hints)
Not Mentioned by Kcit
Hints and tips by Gabriel
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Kcit is also Phi and is based in NZ – thus the pseudonymic inversion I assume – and a prolific setter (e.g. Listener, Inquisitor and the dailies). He tends to be very fair, rigorous and on the harder end of the spectrum. The title is tantalizing and it only made sense once I had made some sense of the theme. Actually that’s pretty typical for me. Some people though seem to be able to telepathically infer the theme from the title alone which of course accelerates the solving process. I invariably find that it’s the last piece of the jigsaw that clicks into place. In this case, I speculated that it had something to do with “unmentionables”.
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Enigmatic Variations 1679 (Hints)
No Introduction by Gaston
Hints and tips by Gabriel
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I often wonder how pre-”everything is available online” generations managed to solve thematic puzzles. I suppose that the answer is that puzzle construction and puzzle decoding have co-evolved. Compilers must now assume that “full text” searching is at their solvers’ fingertips but in the past could only rely on access to hardcopy indexes. Or perhaps our ancestors were simply better educated and certainly had better actual libraries.
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