Enigmatic Variations No. 1100: Compère by Oxymoron

The EV series clocks up another hundred on the mileometer and, due to the rotation of the four current bloggers, I am the lucky one to mark the occasion (as I was with EV1000 a couple of years ago). In ‘COMPÈRE’ there are 24 empty cells (in two separate shapes) after solving. These empty spaces must be filled with a thematic phrase, which includes an abbreviation, and one word split between the shapes. All clue answers and final entries can be justified by Chambers. (This puzzle also had a shortened solving period – submission date brought forward by a week, due to the Xmas festivities – hope nobody was caught out by that?)

My initial approach was just to work through the clues, as best I could, to see if anything obvious jumped out in terms of solved entries being too short for their slots. After a while, a few became clear in the top left corner – ORT, OO, ELIAN, SEE  RED – and then a few more in the bottom right – SOS, NUR, SURER, SORING.

So after some deduction and guessing on crossing words, the empty spaces started to take shape. The ‘Aha!’ moment for me was realising that WASE needed two letters and could become WEASEL. (It might also have helped if I had noticed the asymmetry of the grid, and focused on the areas with multiple bars…which may have got some of you there quicker?)

To cut to the chase, the blank spaces are in the shapes of the letters ‘M’ and ‘C’ – which explains the ‘compère’ of the title, and which prompted a wry smile as ‘mc_rapper67′ should probably have spotted that link sooner…

Filling in the blanks was the next challenge and, with the help of the VE from VELAMINA and the HU from SADHU, these gradually revealed the phrase ‘EV CROSSWORD EL’ + ‘EVEN HUNDRED’ split across the two shapes:

Overall, I found this quite a tough/challenging set of clues, with a few dialect, archaic and obsolete words (although all clearly indicated as such) and several pretty obscure, or at least ‘new-to-me’ words as well. There was also a fairly international feel to it, with Scottish words (CRUISIE being a Scottish wick-ed lamp; Morag as an indicator for Scottishness in COOST), American spellings (Virginia and Shiloh as indicators for ENAMORED and ODOR respectively), and also references to the Irish (Sean), Maori weapons, Australia, the Greek and Dutch, an Austrian shrink and Norway, Glasgow and Germany getting mentions as well.

While solving this I vaguely remembered a similar treatment of a significant numerical milestone in the Inquisitor series – which turned out to be IQ 1300, by Schadenfreude – but looking again you can’t really ‘compère’ the two! (Groan, sorry!…) Apart from to say they are both excellent examples of grid construction, prompting my non-creative brain to say ‘How do they do that…?’ for the umpteenth time.

So thanks to Oxymoron for this challenge, and congrats to all the EV setters on reaching this milestone. Keep them coming – you’ve got another 200 or so to catch up with those pesky Inquisitors…(;+>)

And finally – a Merry Christmas (or Festive break, depending on your particular choice of creed or otherwise) and a Happy New Year to you all.