Enigmatic Variations 958: Seven by Dysart

I thought that this was a tough puzzle from Dysart. The preamble seemed to have so much going on that I needed a bit of a lie down after reading it. That, together with the fairly tough clues, made it a longer than average solve for me.

14 clashing answers had too few squares to accommodate them, and the seven squares where they clashed needed thematic treatment. This probably meant a few letters in these squares which needed anagramming to give a thematic item. One other entry lacked a definition, and there were ten misprints with the correct letters spelling out the author of a thematic work. There was also a square which contained two letters showing how the clashing squares were to be filled.

As I said, a fairly tough puzzle, and it was some way down the line that I had DUB and HE in one of the squares. Having a small interest in astronomy, I knew that it was a star, but couldn’t remember the constellation. That turned out to be Ursa Major, the Plough, and indeed the letters that ended up in each square were the two halves of each star and in the correct order.

The seven stars are: ALKAID, MIZAR, ALIOTH, MEGREZ, PHECDA, MERAK and DUBHE.

27dn was an excellent clue that led to two similar answers ASTERISM and ASTERISK. The former is a group of stars, the latter a single star which needed to replace the 5 or 6 letters in each of the clashing squares.

This puzzle is similar to Listener 4103, Annual Turnover by Ragtag. That required stars to be placed in the grid in the shape of the Plough, but also had grid answers entered boustrophedon-style, forwards and then backwards.

Finally, the correct letters in the misprint clues gave Sean O’Casey, one of whose plays is The Plough and the Stars, which was to be entered beneath the grid.

Solving time: about 3½ hours.

Legend:
ABC* = anagram
ABC< = reversal
abCDef = hidden
Definition in clue

ABC = letters in a single square
X = misprints/misprinted letters