This is one of those puzzles that make your [or, at least my] heart sink when you see a long quotation that covers what seems about half of the grid and, when it’s Araucaria, there’s often devilish wordplay involved. This time, fortunately, or not, depending on your preferences, it was one of his anagrams and, for all I know [knowing nothing about the [mis]fortunes of Swindon Town or Gerard Houlier’s possible involvement – where are you, Rightback?] it could well be on a par with his classic virtual &lits:

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This is my first Indy blog – and I believe there is another new starter next week – so ‘thank-you’ to the Saturday Indy team for letting a couple of newcomers into the schedule. I have been doing a monthly 15^2 blog on the Sunday Telegraph’s themed Enigmatic Variations puzzles for a while now, but this is my first go at a conventional/straight cryptic. Grateful for any feedback – positive or (hopefully constructively) negative…

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After a few weeks of seasonal/festive-themed EVs, we are back to business with a ‘normal’ EV – but no less enyoyable for that! A fiendish looking preamble – with ALL answers entered ‘cyclically’ and an encoded perimeter, with the code based on two unlued entries. It looked like we were going to be back to business with a bump – but, with a bit of head-down application and, I felt, some relatively gentle clueing, this soon fell into place, and turned out to be my quickest EV solve in a long while – although I still haven’t worked out the relevance/connection of the title…

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