Enigmatic Variations 1212: Star Quality by Kcit

What kind of ‘qualities’ of which type of ‘stars’ is Kcit presenting for our enjoyment here? Celestial bodies, sporting stars, movie stars – or the kind of sub-lebrity flotsam that washes up on the myriad of ‘reality TV’ shows these days?!

The preamble states that:

“Ten normally-clued answers are jumbled on entry. The wordplay in each remaining clue leads to the answer and an additional letter not to be entered into the grid. In clue order, these letters spell out a four-component phrase stating what the grid represents; the unclued answers will then be seen to be appropriate labels. Solvers must highlight 32 further squares of thematic material that identifies the STAR QUALITY.”

So, care needs to be taken to identify those to-be-jumbled answers – and in my case a copy of the grid and a pencil are required. I usually pencil in ‘oblongs’ along any unclued entries before solving, just to help them stand out – and here there were just two, down the left and along the bottom. ‘Extra letter(s) in wordplay’ is a fairly standard thematic puzzle device, and adds an extra dimension to solving!

After a couple of runs through the clues, I had tracked down a few of the ‘normal’ clue answers for jumbling – WEAPON, LITIGANT, WIND – and was starting to get a few of the extra letters. Didn’t really get much further on the first sitting, but after a couple of returns to this I had something like A?ERTZ at the start, ??ELLDIAG??? near the middle, and a solitary M at the end. ALERT? SPELL DIAGONAL? M? Hmm..more donkey work needed!

Entering the un-jumbled answers solved so far allowed a few permutations on the jumbles to be narrowed down – which in turn helped with solving other entries. My PDM came when I went back to the extra letters, decided it should be ‘DIAGRAM’ not ‘DIAGONAL’ at the end, and then, after bit of e-trawling through dictionaries and word lists, came up with ‘A HERTZSPRUNG-RUSSELL DIAGRAM’. A WHAT-SPRUNG-RUSTLE-WHAT?! Well, I have learned something new here…thanks, Kcit!

Those unclued answers (‘labels’, as trailed in the pre-amble) turned out to be the axes of the said H-R diagram – LUMINOSITY and TEMPERATURE. The NW-SE diagonal gives MAIN SEQUENCE – the area on an H-R diagram where ‘most’ stars are found, and then, in appropriate locations, the exceptions of SUPER GIANT and WHITE DWARF appeared:

A stupendous (or stellar?!) feat of grid construction – I assume Kcit must be of an astronomical leaning, either by training or by hobby? – to map the diagram’s features to a crossword grid.

I thought the general level of clueing was about ‘medium’ difficulty for an EV – which helped, given the extra complication of jumbling answers and finding extra letters. The two long anagrams making up the rest of the border were fairly gettable (to me anyway!), and there weren’t too many obscure words – ISOGON, CEINTURE, QANAT. It also helped that QUANT was used twice – as ‘punt pole’ in Q(U)ANAT and as ‘number-cruncher’ in QUANTUM, so that one visit to Chambers helped with two clues in one go! The use of ‘Dior’ in 8D, to indicate a French word, also worked well with ‘girdle’ to make a nice surface reading. (French words are often indicated by ‘nice’ (Nice), so this was an interesting variation.)

Challenging, educational, and some fun along the way…many thanks to the setter, and I hope others were equally impressed, and maybe educated a bit as well?

(NB. I am ‘sloping’ off for some half-term skiing next week, so scheduling this ahead of publication next Saturday – 20th. I may be a little tardy in replying to any comments/corrections below, as I am travelling back that day, but any feedback always appreciated!)