Enigmatic Variations No. 1157: Observation by Nudnix

This week, a setter who was new to EV, although there have been a couple of recent Magpie puzzles from Nudnix. The preamble seemed almost innocuous… no missing/extra letters, misprints, spoonerisms or other jiggery-pokery, just some highlighting in the final grid, which was only 11×11. I didn’t know whether I should feel hard done by or to accept it as a late Christmas present. I chose the latter.

Indeed, it was a fairly straightforward solve, and I was finished in about an hour. The unclued 9ac was easy to guess early on as AMBIVALENCE, but that didn’t help me with the endgame that now faced me.

I spotted MOTHE at the beginning of row 4, but I failed to make the turn south. A few minutes later, and IN-LAW was jumping out from column 7, and with the linking R we had MOTHER-IN-LAW. Now all I needed to find was Les Dawson! He was not forthcoming, but MAMET in the last row rang a bell, and, with a bit of research, I identified David Alan Mamet as a playwright, screenwriter and director. I also had this quotation:

They say the definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Cadillac.

Of course, Les Dawson would have dispensed with the first two words! Thus we had the victim and the commentator. All that was left was to find the CLIFF and the collateral damage. This last was represented by the anagram of ‘new cadillac’ — LAW CALCINED splayed at the bottom of the grid.

Good fun from Nudnix, thanks.

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