EV 864 Undercover Agents by Kruger

Sometimes it goes like this: I solve lots of clues. There are a few clashes but on the whole answers fit together. I get enough extra letters to work out the entire quotation and author. But I really can’t see what’s going on. I think that this is the one that’s going to end up with a partial blog. Undercover Agents was like this for me. It didn’t help that the two thematic answers I got first had the right number of letters for the grid and that the third, HOGSHEAD, I accidentally pluralised thus making it fit too. Of course at this stage I didn’t know they were thematic and saw no link between them despite WAIST-HIGH having two body parts in there!

Although I got the quote very early, from four of the first seven clues. I still failed to make the connection to armour and what goes under that armour. I was still thinking more about spies and Monty Python for some reason. It took a lot of staring at why THIGH didn’t quite fit before a vague memory of Cuisse led me to look up CUISH. At last, the penny dropped. I then quickly rattled off the remaining five thematic answers, helped by their being placed symmetrically.

So, the theme was parts of armour replacing the bits of the body they protected. It should have been easier than I made it given Kruger’s excellent and fair cluing and the help of Bradford’s which listed most of the pieces or words close enough to help.

The quotation, “Armoury of the invincible knights of old” is from William Wordsworth’s poem usually know as, “It is not to be thought of”.

It is not to be thought of that the Flood
Of British freedom, which, to the open sea
Of the world’s praise, from dark antiquity
Hath flowed, “with pomp of waters, unwithstood,”
Roused though it be full often to a mood
Which spurns the check of salutary bands,
That this most famous Stream in bogs and sands
Should perish; and to evil and to good
Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung
Armoury of the invincible Knights of old:
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung
Of Earth’s first blood, have titles manifold.

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(XY Z)* anagram
X[Y]Z insertion
X[y]Z deletion
ZYX< reversal
“xyz” homophone
uvwXY Zabc hidden answer
X.Y.Z. alternate letters or initialisation