Enigmatic Variations No.1466 – All That by Poat

10 comments on “Enigmatic Variations No.1466 – All That by Poat”

1. The comic character at 26D is BLACKADDER.

   I wasn’t sure about 7D but ARIADNE of Greek mythology gave Theseus a ball of string so that he could retrace his route to escape the labyrinth after he killed the Minotaur.

   I didn’t know 2 of the Kander and Ebb musicals but having found 2 in the corners I knew where to look for the others and I managed to work them out

2. Another enjoyable EV and I learned something. Not my favourite genre of music but though I’d heard of two of the musicals, I’d not heard of the duo. Very clever of Poat to use an anagram of their names as a concept for the thematic hidden material.

   I also wondered about Ariadne. It struck me more as a General Knowledge clue. I’m probably missing something.

   Thanks to both Poat and Mr Sting.

3. The second entry in Chambers for CLUE (also spelt CLEW) defines it as “a thread that guides through a labyrinth”, so 7d is a cryptic definition clue.

   Nice puzzle from Poat, not as difficult as many of his previous offerings.

4. I’ve commented elsewhere about the clever spot and imaginative use of the anagram, and my enjoyment of the puzzle, so will now raise a discussion point. The clue to SQUACCO uses a homophone for QUACC. My view – and it is only a view, not a criticism, as the rules we play by are what we want them to be, not laws of nature – is that a nonexistent “word” cannot have a homophone, no matter what it looks like. What do others think?

5. I read the preamble once through and plunged staight into solving the clues, which were excellent. When I got the A of AND and the BB of EBB I guessed the duo would be in that entry and would end in ‘and Ebb’ (or ‘and Abb’ or whatever). I have never heard of Kander and Ebb, but it was easy to find searching on ‘Ebb’ alone. So Kander, of which I had the A and E, went in too.

   When I saw where AND would go in the other unclued entry it didn’t take me long to work out the reasonable, readable phrase BREAK AND BEND. I had to look up the works and found, to my pleasant surprise, that I knew three of the four – all except The Visit. JAZZ, to follow ALL THAT, took longer to find, being another work I did not know, being familiar only with the phrase ‘and all that jazz’.

   Thanks to Poat and Mister Sting.

6. Ah! A ‘clue’ (or ‘clew’) is also ‘a thread that guides through a labyrinth’.

7. Ifor @6
   You make a good point about the validity (or not) of a homophone indication of a part-answer. The device is something I prefer not to use (for the small number of crosswords I try to compile as an amateur), and in all honesty I prefer not to see them. But I do not decry its permitted use as part of a well-considered but perhaps liberally inclined editorial policy. After all, when the word SQUACCO is divided up into its phonemes the sequence /kwak/ is clearly a part of /skwako/. (The correct representation actually uses special symbols in place of my ‘a’ and ‘o’, but I hope my point is made. Collins shows how it’s really done!)

8. [Sorry – that should be Ifor @4. I can’t count, or can’t read. Alan B]

9. A nicely educational puzzle for me, as I hadn’t heard of the duo though I have seen some of their works — sounds like they weren’t great at self-publicity. The corner arrangements of works was novel and took some finding: knowing Chicago and Cabaret were likely helped there and the symmetry was both helpful and elegant. The clue to 15 made me smile.

10. Yes, like Stick Insect I hadn’t heard of the duo but knew the works. I liked the clever use of the anagram of their name and, like Ifor, was troubled by the odd Quack.

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