Enigmatic Variations No. 1440: Unusual Grounds by Kruger

15 comments on “Enigmatic Variations No. 1440: Unusual Grounds by Kruger”

1. I struggled to understand 23A, but I think ERUVIM is plural, so locals should remain in the clue. That may be your extra E. Thanks for an entertaining blog and to Kruger for the puzzle.

2. I agree with ub.  The clue could have said ‘locales’, but one meaning of local is locale, so the setter’s ‘locals’ will do for the plural ERUVIM, and there is no extra letter.

3. Thanks ub and Alan B!  I hadn’t noticed when I looked up “eruvim” in my Chambers app that it had taken me to “eruv”, the singular.  Nor had I thought, in all my staring at the “E” clues, that “local” could be a noun meaning the same as “locale”.  I’ll update the blog.

4. I enjoyed this greatly, but as a sometime chemistry student I was taken aback by the inclusion (sanctioned by that source of infallibility, wikipedia) of two elements

   that are no way rare earths.  Rare earths to any chemist are the lanthanides, period.  Mind you, to an astronomer any element apart from H and He is a metal.  Nice

   puzzle though, and glad, like everyone else, that common sense in Telegraph Towers has prevailed.

5. Another false LOCALE here. Nice neat puzzle with a satisfying conclusion. Thanks to Kruger and to Kitty for the blog.

6. For me this was something of a marathon. Not knowing the number of clashing cells was a handicap throughout the solving process. The other potential obstacle was the lack of word-length information for the solutions, but that turned out to be of minor importance, affecting only the dual solution at 7d (LAMBDA/LABDA, with/without an extra M) and the two that crossed at the empty cell. Thank goodness we knew how many clues of each special type there were!

   I managed to complete the grid, my last six clues taking an age to solve. I collected the complete set of 12 letters as I was going along, incidentally enabling me to eliminate LAMBDA, but I had to stay in after class to get my full set of 10 letters.

   Anagrams can be tricky when one doesn’t know what kind of thing to look for, but I got lucky with the first one. ‘Dr Watson’ seemed to stand out, and I readily made the 12 letters into ‘My Dear Watson’. It was my ambition to get the quotation if nothing else, and I was delighted to finish with ‘Elementary’, making the famous misquotation.

   There was no endgame beyond that because I could not identify the theme from the hint (‘Elementary’) or from anything else in view.

   I didn’t twig that the title and the second anagram would define the theme. In the event that hardly mattered because I had two letters wrong in my set of 10. I’d like to mention one of them because it seems to be an unintended but genuine dual: in 4d, ‘fool’ could give you ‘foul’ instead of ‘foot’ to match ‘base’, yielding U instead of T. Hence no solution and no theme.

   Many thanks to Kruger for the puzzle and especially the clues, which were to a high standard. Some were almost too tough to solve, but that was because of the potential clashes.

   Like you, Kitty, I drafted an email for sending to the paper’s Puzzles Editor but was stopped in my tracks! I wrote to him anyway, revising my message, and got an appreciative email back. Thanks for your interesting blog and the full solution.

7. An enjoyable – and educational – puzzle…thanks to setter and blogger.

   Am I the only one who decided to insert the ‘elementary’ numbers in the grid instead of the symbols?…so ’57’ instead of ‘La’ in the first cell, etc?…

   It is ‘consistent’, but on re-reading the preamble just now it is also supposed to be ‘thematically conventional’, and ‘FIRST LETTER second letter’ is probably more ‘conventional’ than the number. If it had said ‘symbolically’ then ‘La’ would definitely have made more sense. We shall see in the published solution tomorrow!…

8. Typical Kruger (which, I hasten to add, doesn’t imply any criticism, far from it) – lots going on and thematic elements (!) distributed evenly so as to make them as accessible as possible, although one did need to understand the theme to avoid being confronted with such as 1a with effectively four unches. “Rare earths” has always been open to interpretation, which is why the term is now largely obsolete; even in my day we spoke of the lanthanons. That in no way detracts from the realisation of the theme and the clever sidestepping of the Y issue. Many thanks, Kruger.

9. What with omissions, clashes, misprints and anagrams for the letters generated there was just too much going on in my view.

10. A really interesting and educational puzzle – thanks Kruger and Kitty for the blog. I also thought that there was a lot going on but the clues were excellent so everything fell into place very neatly.

11. This one kept me going most of the week.

    First I collected the 10 corrected letters and identified RARE EARTHS and worked out what had to happen in the clashing cells.
    That helped me solve the remaining clues and find the 12 missing letters but then I hit a wall.
    Eventually I resorted to the ultimate solving resource and my wife found Elementary my dear Watson.

    Thanks to Kruger to the workout and to Kitty for another comprehensive Blog.

12. I really enjoyed this one – thanks Kruger, and Kitty!

13. PS It’s great to hear that those of us who quietly enjoy the EV but don’t shout about it have been heard!  [Eh?  Ed.]

    The only downside I can see is that it leaves me with a few anger-induced anagrams of THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH’S ENIGMATIC VARIATIONS that I had all lined up ready for the end of August and that I’ll never get to use! A small price to pay!!

    1. EMPHATIC LINES: A TRUE GREAT’S VANISHING TODAY
    2. THE MAIN PARTY ARGUED: “IT’S NOT ACHIEVING SALES”
    And the relative effect it would have had on newspaper sales:
    3. HEALTHY GUARDIAN RISES: NEGATIVE IMPACT ON ST

    Cheers,

    Encota

14. Very enjoyable, and at the tough end of the spectrum for me. I was never much use in the chemistry labs at school, and this brought back painful memories of O level revision…

    The PDM was a long time coming, as like the blogger, I didn’t have the full squad of misprints, being one short. A lot of head scratching got me there after which the final stages weren’t too taxing.

    Some lovely clues and surfaces from Kruger, my favourite being 6D.

    My thanks to all involved in the puzzle and blog.

15. Just catching up with some puzzles, so a bit late for this one. Took me a long time to work out what was going on, but got to RARE EARTHS eventually and filled in the grid accordingly. I never did get the phrase though as I had muddled some of the definition typos. Enjoyable clues and (eventually) enjoyable grid fill. Thanks Kruger

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