Enigmatic Variations No. 1160: Around Eve by Nod

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A nice short preamble…only 24 clues…this should be a doddle! But hang on, what is going on with the grid? No bars, no grid numbers, except 1-12 along the ‘axes’. No clue enumerations either…there must be more to this than meets the eye…

The preamble states:

“In AROUND EVE, each clue contains an additional word that must be removed before solving; in clue order, initial letters of these words give information to help complete the grid.”

So, unless this is a twelve-by-twelve word square (which would be some achievement, and my first solve – 12D as ECCO – disproved that theory!), there must be something going on to fit some shorter words into these longer slots? Or maybe we have to fill in some black squares – but that would be odd for an EV…

Some fiendish clueing – coupled with the lack of crossing letters, at least early on - meant that it took me a while to get into this. It was also quite difficult to track down the extra words, for their first letters. At one point, I did consider giving up and sending out an ‘SOS’ to my fellow EV bloggers, to see if anyone else was willing to take this one.

But persevere I did, and the first half of the extra-word initials eventually started to look like ‘C?ANGE ?NSWER’…and then ‘S TO…’. But change the answers to ‘what’? One avenue of thought was to pick the word before/after in Chambers, but there was no consistent 12-letter word in every case.

After much head-scratching and failed clue parsing, I resorted to ‘word-crunching’ the remaining clues, to see what permutations of extra-word initials might make some sense – and the PDM finally came: ‘TO MORSE CODE’!

So, all these short answers must be converted to Morse code, and will presumably all be 12 dots and/or dashes long…

But there was still a long way to go! I was still about 8 answers short of completing the grid, and although I now had some crossing ‘letters’, they were only really crossing part-letters, and much dot-and-dash-crunching ensued before I finally completed the grid:

EV1160

Of course, in theory, if you were smart (or lucky?) enough to spot the theme early on and ‘dry solve’ one complete set of either Across or Down clues, you could have finished the grid by only solving twelve clues – and I’m sure there are a few of you out there. In my case, I actually completed the grid with two or three clues unsolved, but then I had to press on and parse them for the blog anyway!

Wow. A tough, but satisfying challenge. And I am glad I didn’t send that ‘SOS’, although it would have been appropriate in the circumstances!.

Not sure where to start in praise of this – an amazing concept in the first place, and then to see it through the whole way, with all those crossing dots and dashes – I nearly went mad just solving it, I guess it must have taken some effort to compose. The clueing fiendish (to me anyway!), incorporating the extra words in a way that made them (mostly) quite hard to detach from the real clue.

I will dare to suggest that this would not have been out of place as a Listener, and is certainly at the harder end of the EV scale – and a classic of the genre. Thank-you Nod.

One last piece, which took me a while longer, and might have helped to crack this earlier: the title, AROUND EVE, is of course an anagram of ENDEAVOUR, as in Inspector Endeavour Morse - a further link to cruciverbalism, in both the fictional character, and his creator, Colin Dexter…

(NB. Apologies for any Morse transcription errors in the below and the grid – I had dot-dash-blindness by the end of this!)

Across
Clue No Solution Extra Word Solution Entry Clue (definition underlined, extra word in bold) /
Logic/Parsing
1 TARTAR Computer TARTAR —•—•—•—•—•—• Jack set on computer language /
TAR (jack, sailor) + TAR (set)
13 TACKET Heavy TACKET —•——•—•—•—•— End of heavy mallet covering headless nail in places /
T (end of ‘malleT’) + ACKET (jacket, or covering, without first letter – ‘headless’)
14 MEDIC Accepts MEDIC ——•—••••—•—• Physician rarely accepts American plant /
double defn. MEDIC can have both these meanings
15 INTACT Nothing INTACT ••—•—•——•—•— Whole clue not starting to do nothing /
(H)INT (clue, not starting) + ACT (to do)
16 BAWR Girl BAWR —••••—•——•—• Glaswegian one-liner detailed naughty girl with Romeo /
BA(D) (naughty, de-tailed) + W (with) + R (Romeo, NATO/phonetic alphabet)
17 WALK Ears WALK •——•—•—••—•— Track rabbit with wide ears replacing head /
(T)ALK (rabbit on) with W (wide) replacing first letter, or head
18 TURMS African TURMS —••—•—•——••• African forces charge university, not base /
T(E)RMS (charge) with U (university) relacing E (base, logarithm)
19 ANTENNA Notices ANTENNA •——•—•—•—••— Girl goes back after soldier maybe notices horn /
ANT (soldier, maybe) + ENNA (Anne, girl, going back)
20 MARTIN Slow MARTIN ——•—•—•—••—• Hurt slow fat bird /
MAR (damage, hurt) + TIN (fat, alternative usage as vessel for liquid, variation on ‘vat’)
21 UNAPT Wall UNAPT ••——••—•——•— Unfit local one exercises astride a wall /
UN (one, local, dialect) + PT (physical training, exercises), around (astride) A
22 AVAST Endorphins AVAST •—•••—•—•••— Endorphins stop narcotics ending in habit /
AVAS (narcotics, an ‘ava’, or kava, being a narcotic drink prepared from pepper root) + T (last letter, or ending, of habiT)
23 KICK Ridiculing KICK —•—••—•—•—•— Quit ridiculing king in front of uncultured Cockney /
K (king) in front of (H)ICK (uncultured, dropping the aitch, as a Cockney might)
Down
Clue No Solution Extra Word Solution Entry Clue (definition underlined, extra word in bold) /
Logic/Parsing
1 ORCA Solid ORCA ———•—•—•—••— Solid gold cases – they may be found in school? /
OR (gold, yellow, heraldic) + CA (cases, abbreviation)
2 FENMEN Troublesome FENMEN ••—••—•——•—• East Anglians ward off old couple both endlessly troublesome /
FEN(D) and MEN(G) – ward off, and archaic word for couple – both endless
3 MARKET Oranges MARKET ——•—•—•—•—•— See alien sell oranges /
MARK (see, note) + ET (Extra Terrestrial, alien)
4 PEENGE Mountain PEENGE •——•••—•——•• Whimper in Fife when for example Swede comes up mountain /
EG (for example) NEEP (turnip or swede) – all coming up = PEENGE
5 TURNS Oven TURNS —••—•—•—•••• Converts old kitchens in Perth without each oven /
T(EA)-URNS (obsolete Scottish, i.e. Fife, word for ‘kitchens’), without EA – each)
6 RETRY Radio RETRY •—••—•—•—•—— Right half of missile study hear radio again /
R (right) + (ROCK)ETRY (half of missile study)
7 TINKED Shriek TINKED —••—•—•—•—•• Weed left shriek out but emitted a high note /
TINK(L)ED (weed, urinated, without L – ‘left out’)
8 AWRY Ensemble AWRY •—•——•—•—•—— Take after wife wearing ensemble indeed cock-eyed /
A_Y (indeed) around (worn by) W (wife) + R (recipe, Latin – ‘take’)
9 KEYED Catastrophe KEYED —•—•—•——•—•• Kirkpatrick assessed catastrophe in a state of tension /
K (Kirkpatrick, abbreviation, catalogue of Domenico Scarlatti’s works) + EYED (assessed)
10 ARDENT Oil ARDENT •—•—•—•••—•— Old plough carried off, oil failing to start burning /
ARD (obsolete word for plough) + (S)ENT (carried off, failing to start)
11 TALAS Doomed TALAS —•—•—•••—••• Frontal assault secures doomed Pacific capital /
hidden word in ‘fronTAL ASsault’
12 ECCO Eats ECCO •—•—•—•—•——— Football’s centre back eats there in Naples /
reversed centre of (S)OCCE(R)

2 comments on “Enigmatic Variations No. 1160: Around Eve by Nod”

  1. Good blog entry. I thought this was the best EV in some time, I have to say. It was VERY challenging, but a great idea and very impressive execution.

    My solving experience was slightly different however, in that I had solved seven clues, and was starting to despair at the cold solving, when I thought of seeing if I could make an anagram of the puzzle’s title. I quickly came up with ENDEAVOUR, spotted the Morse connection, and could then start translating. This no doubt saved me a good amount of time – altbough it was still a struggle for me to finish the last few clues at the end, FENMEN proving particularly problematic.

    I realise that the EV can’t be this hard every week, but it would be good if it could be this hard more often than it is. Hopefully the editor reads this, and takes this on board! Thank you Nod for a very challenging work-out, and for one of my favourite EVs ever.

  2. I think both congratulations & thanks are warranted for the blog.

    I spotted the title anagram immediately but it didn’t help until I got to the desperation point of trying to work out the message having only solved about 7-8 clues (even then I have to admit to getting help for 3 of those having got so few on my own that it was a case of give up or ‘cheat’).

    As you say, the grid can be completed without solving half the clues – I still had 4-5 unsolved – I too, persevered, but still failed to get 16, so thanks for the explanation of that.

    My reaction to this puzzle was that it was more Listener territory – certainly it’s by far the hardest EV I’ve done (90+% of the last 2.5 years or so) – unlike Mike @1 I would rather this was left to the Listener (where I expect to be flummoxed like this on a frequent basis).

    That’s not to say that this wasn’t an excellent puzzle – but, to my mind, it’s outside the range that regular EV solvers would expect.

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