Enigmatic Variations No. 1403: Arrival by Kcit

A relatively small 10×10 (or, effectively, 11×11 minus 1) grid for ARRIVAL from Kcit…who is arriving where?…

The preamble states that:

“The puzzle marks an ARRIVAL. From one answer to a normal clue in each row or column a letter must be moved to the rightmost column or bottom row respectively. In eight other clues, the definition refers to the full word entered at the relevant point, while wordplay omits one of the letters. The omitted letters in order make the original name of a feature of the rightmost column, which is to be highlighted in the completed grid. The bottom row is a later discovery in the same region, which will identify the lead person arriving and where. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.”

A fairly familiar device – shifting letters right and down to make phrases – not helped by the lack of enumeration, but where there is one entry per row/column then that one must be affected…

I dipped in and out of this for a couple of days, until I had what seemed like POV to AY in the right-most column, and a pattern-match suggested POVERTY BAY, which eventually kind of led to the COOK STRAIT along the bottom row.

The omitted letters from wordplay were more problematic, until I spotted something Kiwi-ish in the leading diagonal and e-learned that Poverty Bay was originally (and probably still is?) called TEONEROA – which helped me backfill a few of those omitted letters…

So, Cap’n COOK sailed STRAIT into TEONEROA (Poverty Bay) on 7-Oct-1769, precisely 250 years (minus one day) before the publication of this puzzle:

Everything you need from an EV – a devious device, some tough clues – my LOP (last one parsed) was TOTE-BAG – and an interesting denouement…

Thanks to Kcit(/Phi), who I believe hails from somewhere down-under, and apologies for any omissions/errors below – this has been a bit rushed after a tired and emotional late night Friday train home from London…