Enigmatic Variations No.1003 – Identity Crisis by 1ac or 44ac

This was magnificent. A great theme, well executed. Many thanks to… well, to whom, exactly?

There seems to be a fair amount going on – unclued entries, additional words and subsidiary indications, and highlighting to be done.

There where a number of clues (13dn, 40dn) with fairly straightforward subsidiary indications which, after a check in Chamber’s that ‘Tiu’ and ‘reh’ were anything more than nonsense, began the population of the grid. Once one had a few letters in the top and/or bottom row, a judicious rereading of the preamble (the annoyed editor has to refer to the setter as 1ac or 44ac because he doesn’t know his name) allowed an intelligent guess to be made as to the unclued entries. Obviously, having found and solved one or more subsidiary indication made identifying the others easier. The additional words did not leap out at you, perhaps because they could all have served as anagram indicators.

I’ve highlighted the additional subsidiary indications in my explanation below. I imagine that it was by means of these, rather than the final highlighting that most solvers discovered the identity of the setter. Knowing whom you were looking for did help the search. The single extraneous words were: irate (from 36dn), fallible (from 21ac), overrash (from 37ac), ramshackle (from 17dn). Apart from irate, these were not entered in a straightforward ‘word search’ style, but formed the letters of the setter’s name, as shown below.

So now, at last, we say: Thank you, Ifor!

Here‘s another piece of identity-related greatness.

I do have a pair of quibbles (don’t worry – they’re house-trained). They are insignificant, but I mention them for completeness sake. It’s quite possible I’ve gone wrong somewhere (this is where your clarification is particularly appreciated, dear reader). In 14ac, I’m not sure where the final ‘a’ comes from (the ‘one’ seems to be used up in the additional subsidiary indication), and I’m not sure that 39ac works as a semi- &lit, if indeed it’s intended to. At any rate, these are not noticeable flaws on an edifice of [insert overblown purple phrase]. Yes, folks, this one I particularly liked.

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Notation
(xxx) = definition
{xxx} = (anagram/homophone/container/etc.) indicator
XXX* = anagram
< = reversal
xxx = unused letter(s)
Idlers=redundant word

Please post a comment if the explanations are not clear.

IFOR subsidiary indications