I’m going to put it out there – if we had an annual awards ceremony for the Enigmatic Variations (the Evvys?) – which we don’t – then Luxor would be strutting his/her stuff on the red carpet in a tux/ballgown, as a strong favourite for POTY (Puzzle of the Year) with SELF-SIMILARITY…
The preamble states that:
“Clues are presented in alphabetical order of their answers. They must be entered into the grid where they will fit, in straight lines in any of six possible directions. The answer to the first clue starts in the asterisked cell. Wordplay in each clue provides an extra letter not to be entered into the grid. Read in clue order, these give an instruction to complete the pattern of SELF-SIMILARITY. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended; an alternative spelling for one answer is in Collins.”
Having struggled and slogged my way through fellow-contender Chiffchaff’s BANG! most of the week before, my heart dropped a beat when I saw this hexagonal honeycomb jigsaw grid, with just one teensy-weensy bit of assistance with the first clue.
(I didn’t help myself by not reading the rubric carefully enough, namely the crucial words ‘straight lines‘, which meant that I assumed that first clue, which I didn’t get for quite a while anyway, might go: up; down and around the corner; or north-west and then any one of three directions thereafter. How the goodness was I going to fit the rest in with so many permutations?!)
Luckily, I showed the puzzle to a non-cruciverbal but mathematically-minded and logical Christmas guest, who was intrigued by my despair, and they quickly pointed out the error of my ways – it could only go up or north-west, in a straight line; and if it went up then there would have to be a 2-letter entry below it, or entries would have to overlap up/down that right-hand side.
With this cold slap back into reality, I knuckled down into jigsaw mode – first check the clue enumerations and the grid slots (although the latter was easier said than done, with the grid layout and those barred honeycomb cells!) to see if there are any extremes/outliers that might provide a way in. And, sure enough, there was only one 9, which must go up/down the middle, and there were six 7s, which must surely go round the perimeter. There were also only two 3s, which should help narrow things down once I got them!
Suitably reassured that this might be do-able after all, I stopped mentally drafting the cri-de-coeur e-mail to my fellow EV bloggers, and started in on some solving. Once I had PINEAPPLE as the 9-letter answer, I took a punt and wrote it in downwards, as I had a couple of 7s with P as first or last letter, and none, so far, with E at either end.
From there I took another punt on POLARIS heading south-east, and LOCKS UP heading north-east – although I shot myself in the foot (again!) by writing this in as LOOKS UP, which caused some consternation with the 5-letter entry heading in from or out to that O/C. These initial moves enabled a few interior entries to be placed, with either certainty or reasonably educated guesses, and things gradually started to fill up. At some point I also got AGILE as the first entry, so this helped as another inroad to the interior.
Once I’d sorted out the LOCKED UP/CLARA conundrum, and worked out which way NATIVES and NOSIDES went in, with a bit of trial-and-error and a lot of undoing/erasing/re-trying on my iPad PDF copy of the grid, I eventually managed to fill the thing!
(The animation below doesn’t necessarily reflect the order I did things in, but is more based on an assumption that one has a full set of answers… AGILE first, then PINEAPPLE, then STREAKS as the only 7 letter word with an A in 3rd or 5th letter, then POLARIS and LOCKS UP, etc. etc.)
In parallel, the extra letters gradually revealed themselves as ‘SHADE TWELVE EXAMPLES OF FRACTAL PATTERNS IN NATURE’.
Cue a lot of grid-staring, before I spotted PINE (cone), FERN, LEAVES, NERVES, SPIRAL and SHELLS for six of these.
Cue a lot more grid-staring and some Wiki-oogling of ‘fractal patterns in nature‘… Time passed, then a bit more. TREE was a possible. LOTUS maybe? But they weren’t neat and symmetrical like the first six. I just couldn’t work out any straight-line entries or adjacent words/part words in a line that would lead to anything ‘fractal’.
Then, just as I was about to give up and post a lesser-spotted ‘DNF blog‘, I spotted ELTA in that bottom right area, and then the adjacent DE which could make DELTA, which had come up in a lot of those seemingly fruitless searches. And finally the PDM (and the fruit) came – PINEAPPLE, not PINE, and the six missing fractals were curves (grrr!) – COAST, DELTA, LUNGS, VEINS, TREES and RIVER, helping to make that most fractal of shapes: a snowflake!
Cue a scramble to produce a tidied-up version for submission – just in time, and fingers crossed – and I could get on with the blog…
Wow – what can I say? Certainly one of the hardest EVs of the year (with a tip of the chapeau to Chiffchaff/BANG! again) and extremely satisfying to reach the conclusion…eventually. My thanks to Luxor, along with congratulations for a stupendous grid design, and here is hoping for a nice quiet January filled with some relatively gentler EVs!
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Extra letter | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/Parsing (extra letter in bOold) |
|
| * | S | AGILE | Active generation commandeering island and vanishing (5)
AG_E (generation) around (commandeering) I(S)L( |
|
| * | H | AMBER | Breaking tool, leader of band replaces last minute warning light (5)
(H)AM( |
|
| * | A | AMBO | President formerly overturned reading-desk (4)
OB(A)MA, Barack, former president, overturned = AMBO! |
|
| * | D | ANNUL | Abolish name unknown in troubled land (5)
AN_L(D) (anag, i.e. troubled, of LAND) around NU (name unknown) |
|
| * | E | APNEA | Piece of grape nearly giving cessation of breathing (5)
hidden word in, i.e. piece of, ‘grAP(E)NEArly’ |
|
| * | T | AREOLA | Dare to laugh guarding small marked space (6)
hidden word in, i.e. guarded by, ‘dARE(T)O LAugh’ |
|
| * | W | ASLANT | Crooked law in American senate occasionally bypassed (6)
A (American) + S_NT (alternate letters, i.e. occasionally bypassed, of SeNaTe) around LA(W) |
|
| * | E | BONGS | Is entirely suitable to ignore start of loud ringing (5)
B(E)( |
|
| * | L | CLARA | Bright girl beginning to catalogue everything about Egyptian deity (5)
C (beginning of Catalogue) + (L)LA (all, everything, about) + RA (Egyptian deity) |
|
| * | V | COAL | Fuel company estimate losing EU backing (4)
CO (company) + (V)AL( |
|
| * | E | ELT | Locally sow kernel of seed originally lacking trowel (3)
E(E) (middle, or kernerl, of sEEd) + LT (original letters of Lacking Trowel) |
|
| * | E | ENSATE | Sword-shaped bench in poet’s flat (6)
EN_E (poetic, even, or flat) around S(E)AT (bench) |
|
| * | X | ENTERA | Guts cut short external wrangling (6)
anag, i.e. wrangling, of E(X)TERNA( |
|
| * | A | EPSOM | Record imaginary drug in Surrey town (5)
EP + SOM(A) (imaginary drug, from Brave New World) |
|
| * | M | FERN | Now and then feed marine plant (4)
alternate letters, i.e. now and then, of ‘FeEd (M)aRiNe’ |
|
| * | P | FLED | Left hurriedly served food round empty pool (4)
F_ED (served food) around (P)L (empty PooL) |
|
| * | L | HAIR | Locks husband in den (4)
(L)_AIR (den) around H (husband) |
|
| * | E | KIEV | Starmer maybe, taking electric vehicle for run in capital earlier (4)
KI(E)( |
|
| * | S | KIN | Outer surface unit of measurement in China (3)
subtractive double defn. – (S)KIN is an outer surface; and KIN is a unit of measurement in China and Japan, the catty |
|
| * | O | KINEMA | Reform regularly forgotten area behind back of kiosk in old picture house (6)
K (back of kiosK) + IN + E(O)M (regular letters forgotten from rEfOrM) + A (area) |
|
| * | F | LACE | Fabric left on surface (4)
L (left) + (F)ACE (surface) |
|
| * | F | LARK | Mess around sides of footstool and chest (4)
(F)L (side letters of FootstooL) + ARK (chest) |
|
| * | R | LEAVES | Several loose pages (6)
anag, i.e. loose, of SEVE(R)AL |
|
| * | A | LOCKS UP | Confines learner oddly once request rejected in court (7, two words)
L (learner, L-plate) + OC (odd letters of OnCe) + KS(A) (ask, request, rejected) + UP (in court, up before the beak) |
|
| * | C | LOTUSES | Idiot regularly takes flowers (7)
(C)LOT (idiot) + USES (takes) |
|
| * | T | NATIVES | Original inhabitants most green over time (7)
NA_IVES(T) (most green, innocent) around (over) T (time) |
|
| * | A | NERVES | Ravens disturbed eating last of brimstone butterflies (6)
NERV_S(A) (anag, i.e. disturbed, of RAVENS) around (eating) E (last of brimstonE) |
|
| * | L | NO-SIDES | Ends of games that might be cause of disappointment in playground (7)
if there are NO S(L)IDES at the playground, children might be disappointed! |
|
| * | P | ORRICE | Cost covering yellow iris root (6)
(P)_RICE (cost) around (covering) OR (heraldic, yellow or golden) |
|
| * | A | OSLO | Very big Asian capital (4)
OS (outsize, very big) + L(A)O (Asian, native of Laos) |
|
| * | T | OVER | Public excess (4)
subtractive double defn. – OVER(T) can mean out, in public; and OVER can be a surplus, or excess |
|
| * | T | PINEAPPLE | Cooked new plate pie containing soft fruit (9)
PINEAP_LE(T)(anag, i.e. cooked, of N – new – PLATE PIE) around (containing) P (piano, softly, music) |
|
| * | E | POLARIS | Underwater missile to surface following return of dock (7)
POL (lop, or dock, returned) + ARIS(E) (surface) |
|
| * | R | RIVA | Crack in entrance discovered (4)
( |
|
| * | N | SHELLS | Cases state of turmoil in Senegal society (6)
S(N) (Senegal) + S (society), around HELL (state of turmoil) |
|
| * | S | SPIRAL | Girl not good, troubled with asps winding (6)
subtractive anagram, i.e. troubled, of ( |
|
| * | I | STICH | Recalled this in Latin, it’s line of verse (5)
H(I)C (this, in Latin) + ITS, all recalled, or reversed, to give STICH |
|
| * | N | STREAKS | Veins in cuts of beef procured by navy? On the contrary (7)
ST_EAKS (cuts of beef) around (procuring, not procured by) R(N) (Royal navy) |
|
| * | N | SYBOE | Greasy bones concealing Mac’s onion (5)
hidden word in, i.e. concealed by, ‘greaSY BO(N)Es’ |
|
| * | A | TEAL | Shade the dahlias unevenly (4)
odd, or uneven, letters of ‘ThE dAhLi(A)s’ |
|
| * | T | TEES | Dry parish raised umbrella shapes above shrines (4)
T(T) (teetotal, dry) + EES (see, or parish, raised) |
|
| * | U | TIARA | Crown attorney initially pursuing NZ bird artist (5)
T(U)I (NZ bird) + A (Attorney, initially) + RA (Royal Academician, artist) |
|
| * | R | TREE | Trekker losing two kilos that could be sallow (4)
TRE( |
|
| * | E | TSAR | Ruler and T-square lacking quality acceptable (4)
TS( |
|