Enigmatic Variations 954: As Per Brewer by Kruger

I think Kruger has set some tough puzzles in the past, but this week’s was comparatively easy. The wordplay in every clue had an extra letter not entered in the grid, and these spelt out a quotation, apart from two key words. The central square had to be completed with the last letter of the quotation, as given by Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

I didn’t find anything too difficult with the clues, in fact they were quite easy, with a lot of anagrams and simple truncations. The surface readings were very good, with a number bringing a smile to my lips, especially 45ac, 53ac, 3dn and 49dn.

The unclued entries were fairly obviously, and I chose to look up DEVIL in Brewer’s first. This quickly led to DEVIL DICK as the nickname of Richard PORSON, but I couldn’t find anything by him in the ODQ. There was nothing much under Aeneas in Brewer’s, but the entry for Dido revealed all the details necessary. Apparently Richard Porson said he could make a rhyme on any subject, and when challenged to make one on the three Latin gerund endings, -di, -do, -dum, came up with what was spelt out by the extra letters in the clues:

When Dido found Aeneas would not come
She mourned in silence and was Di-do-dum(b)

And there at the end was the ‘optional’ letter B that was required in the central square of the grid.

Solving time: about 2 hours

Legend:
Definition in clue
ABC* = anagram
ABC< = reversal
abCDef = hidden
X = extra letters in wordplay