Enigmatic Variations No. 1068: Bargain by Nutmeg

Some sad news to report first – which I don’t think has been mentioned on this site yet – is that the preamble to EV1069, published on Sun 5 May informs us that James Leonard, aka EV setter Rustic, the EV editor for more than 20 years, had died the previous week on 28 May, at the age of 72. I’m sure all EV fans, and indeed all 15×15 contributors and visitors, will be saddened to hear this. There is an obituary in the telegraph here, and the announcement above EV1069 states: “If you have ever solved an Enigmatic Variations puzzle, then you have enjoyed the work of James Leonard. So we are very sad to say that James Leonard, the editor of the EV for more than 20 years, died last Sunday, aged 72. He will be greatly missed. James launched the EV in The Sunday Telegraph on October 11 1992 and had edited it ever since, as well as contributing EVs which he compiled under his alias of Rustic. He was held in enormous respect and affection by his team of compilers, some of whom say they learned almost everything they know about barred crosswords from James.”

I have to admit that as an EV solver for over 10 years, and a blogger for the last 3 years, I wasn’t even aware of who the EV editor was – which must be a sign that James was doing a good job in the background! In fact my first EV blog (EV909) was a Rustic. So a silent ‘thank-you’ from me to James/Rustic, and condolences to his nearest and dearest.

Turning back to EV1068 – Bargain, by Nutmeg – the preamble recommends to use pencil first, so some grid manipulation to be expected – and also to look for a ‘concealed message’. Extra letters generated by the wordplay in all Down clues would give the nature of the ‘bargain’, and also help to find two unclued entries.

My first session on this, with the recommended pencil, yielded maybe a quarter of the answers, but well spread around the grid, and no obvious words jumping out of the few down clues for which I had worked out the extra letter. A period of busy-ness at work and elsewhere led me to neglect the puzzle for at least a week, and then I remembered that it was my turn to blog, otherwise it might have been left in that quarter-completed state.

A ‘blitz’ session followed, with close accompaniment from Chambers, and things slowly started to come together – the extra letters spelled out ‘YOU BUY ONE, YOU GET ONE FREE’ – a ‘BOGOF’, in supermarket terms! – and the unclued words were FREE and PAID – the said ‘one bought’ and ‘one free’.

I would say the general clueing level was quite tough – but, given that the two unclued words were only 4 letters, and each had three crossing letters, their completion was not too difficult, and may have helped if the phrase was not quite complete (or vice versa if the phrase came to you first?)

But – what of the final piece of the preamble – the concealed message to be obeyed? This took me a while – looking for something that might relate to shopping, bargains, etc. First rule of hidden messages in barred/thematics – look at the diagonals. Second rule – the middle row/column. Before trying to make it too complicated for yourself!

Not helped by the fact that ETH at 26A was my last entry – I finally spotted ‘DELETE THIS ROW’ across the middle row, and dutifully did so, on my inked final copy for entry.

I have to say I don’t quite see the connection of ‘DELETE THIS ROW’ with the BOGOF and the ‘bargain’ of the title – unless I am missing something obvious, which someone may explain in the comments below. But apart from that, I thought this was an excellent example of the EV genre that James/Rustic helped to establish – quite tough clues, extra letters making a phrase, unclued entries and a hidden message. Thanks, Nutmeg.

(NB. I couldn’t quite parse ENNEADIC at 7D – any assistance welcomed.)