Enigmatic Variations No. 1299: Vicious Circle by Raffles

‘Only’ thirty clues (with a quotation round the perimeter), so surely VICIOUS CIRCLE is an EV blogger’s delight? But I found it hard to get going at first, although I squared the circle in the end…

These unclued perimeter quotations also cut down on the number of crossing letters for the clued answers, and I struggled though a whole commute to work (one hour), ending up with just 10 answers solved. It didn’t help that it took me a while to get my head around the preamble and, in the back of my mind, I was vaguely (mis?)remembering a similarly titled recent Inquisitor, where the circle in question was a circle of letters in the grid spelling out the words VICIOUS CIRCLE.

Anyway, the preamble states that:

“In VICIOUS CIRCLE, four unclued entries each represent a member of a group. Each clue contains a misprint which must be corrected before solving; in clue order, the correct letters give a name for the group, plus another member. The statement running around the perimeter must be changed to a statement made by one of the featured members of the group, making only real words. Chambers Dictionary (2016) and The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations are recommended; one entry is an abbreviation, and one unchecked perimeter cell in the final grid contains two letters.”

After that first go I put this down for a while and picked it up the next day – same commute, similar result – 10 more solves, but at least some structure and outer letters coming in to view…’members of a group’…so we could be talking about a band of musicians? Down in the bottom left I had something that could be KAUFMAN – but that didn’t ring any bells in terms of my musical knowledge.

Over two hours in, this was moving into ‘difficult EV’ territory, but fortunately a bit of focus those misprinted letters helped…the last few seemed to be forming BENCHLEY – from which I went off on a tangent with Peter Benchley, author of ‘Jaws’ – so maybe this is a literary group? Which wasn’t too tangential, as an electronically enhanced search for KAUFMAN and BENCHLEY provided my PDM – they were members of ‘THE ALGONQUIN ROUND TABLE’, also known as the ‘Vicious Circle’ – a group of intellectuals – writers, actors, critics and general wits – who gathered to bitch and moan and play practical tricks on each other at the Algonquin Hotel in New York in the 1920s. (Sounds like a glorified works canteen, except that they didn’t actually do any ‘proper’ work?!)

Other thematic/unclued members were Ruth HALE, Alexander WOOLLCOTT and, maybe the most famous of the group, Dorothy PARKER.

The outer perimeter also became clear – YOU CAN LEAD A HORSE TO WATER, BUT YOU CAN’T MAKE IT THINK’ – and this had to be altered to a famous quip of Parker’s – YOU CAN LEAD A HORTICULTURE, BUT YOU CAN’T MAKE HER THINK’…a quote I was reasonably familiar with, and it needed two letters in one cell to make it fit:

After the alterations all entries were real words (well, one proper noun – DONAU, which I think is a place name), and the two-letter substitution was also part of a new word – HERE – which all-in-all is a nice piece of grid construction.

**Update – schoolboy error – always read and re-read the preamble…the two letter substitution should be ‘EH’ in the unchecked cell below where I put it, and IRE just becomes ERE. (Life is too short to go and amend the animated diagram, I am afraid!)

Thanks to Raffles (another famous hotel!) for a challenging and enjoyable puzzle…

I struggled to parse ‘LEO’ at 25A – I think I have just got it as I am finalising the blog, but any corrections or better suggestions for this, and/or any of the below, are welcomed!

(The previous puzzle I was subconsciously channelling was actually IQ 1456, ‘Bad Company’ by Schadenfraude, which had a different set of words in the circle, but then had to have ‘VICIOUS CIRCLE’ written below the grid – nothing to do with this theme, but a subliminal distraction for me at least!)