Enigmatic Variations 846 Three Fours by Jophu

Jophu is another new setter to me so I didn’t know what to expect with this one. The clues were normal and, as it turned out, fairly straightforward. There were some very easy clues here with parts of the word play appearing en claire in the clue. This helped with getting quite a few entries into the grid and noticing that the checking letters didn’t help with some of the more stubborn clues. Luckily the easy, but very good, anagram at 48 and most of its checking letters suggested deleting the letters HAMLET. The unclued 28 then leapt out and baring the odd sticking point everything fell into place quite quickly. The error in the grid at 16 fooled me for a bit as I saw an unnumbered entry and missed the actual clue for a while. examining the rows above and below the central row the message turned out to be: REMOVE SHAKESPEARE CHARACTER(S) (though UNNEST could work in place of REMOVE but it wasn’t as cleverly hidden). I was greatly helped in this puzzle by an excellent book, Exit, Pursued by a Bear by Louise McConnell. This concise encyclopaedic guide to all of Shakespeare’s work lists all the characters down to non-speaking cameos. For future reference it has synopses of all the plays and lots of other information for the less literate crossword solver such as me. Oh, and it is also available at a remaindered price from the right outlet.

I am left wondering about the title. I assumed there was a character hidden in there but I couldn’t find it. I was also left wondering about the soundness of a couple of clues though I may be misreading them. Overall though an enjoyable if easy romp.

In thematic answers red letters make up the removed name, blue the grid entry.

(XYZ)* anagram
X[Y]Z insertion
X[y]Z deletion
X[y&gtB]Z substitution
ZYX< reversal
X.Y.Z. initials
X…Z extremes
“xyz” homophone
vwXYZab hidden word