Enigmatic Variations No. 1687: I Am What I Am by Artix

Did anyone else have Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I AM WHAT I AM’ earworming as they solved this pretty tough jigsaw puzzle?…

The preamble states that:

“In order to complete I AM WHAT I AM, solvers must add 16 more ninety-degree, rotationally symmetric bars and optionally insert the other numbers (n, from 1 to 40) in the grid. Clues are listed in alphabetical order of their answers to be entered where they will fit. The nth letters of the 24 clues to fully cross-checked entries spell out, in numerical order, what must be highlighted. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.”

After staring blankly at this for a while, and not getting very many solutions on an initial pass through the clues, I eventually pulled myself together, gave myself a metaphorical slap around the face and a hard stare in the mirror, and went into jigsaw mode:

• write out sets of letter counts by length, using _ _ _ _ etc. and start to fill them in as clues get solved
• look at letter count distribution – is there a cohort of a suitably small number that might be useful to attack first?
• can you take an educated guess/stab in the dark at an initial entry?

The answer to the second step was ‘yes, but, no, but‘! There are four 10s, and four 4s, which might be a logical place to start, rather than the eight 5s or twenty-eight 6s. But there are no slots of 10 or 4 in the grid?!

So, we are going to have to be a bit creative with the extra bars we are expected to add. An obvious place to start is the slots of 12, where two bars would reduce them to 10s, and I initially assumed the bars would be rotationally symmetrical, one cell in from each end. I only had two of the 10s at this point, so I lobbed in BLASTODERM across the third row, and then had to put EPISPASTIC along the third-from-bottom. However, once I had ASTRINGENT it was clear this approach wouldn’t work. So we would have to have two bars at one end, with the 10s touching the perimeter at either top/bottom or left/right.

The As of BLASTODERM and ASTRINGENT seemed a good place to start, so I fortuitously shifted BLASTODERM to the left and entered ASTRINGENT running down from it. This meant that EPISPASTIC would then fit with the E of ASTRINGENT. So far so good, and a nice framework to build upon.

I didn’t have the fourth 10 yet, so I shifted to the 5s, as I had a few of them solved, and they seemed to cross the 10s quite regularly. With a bit of trial and error, I tried a few permutations to see if I could fit some 5s in, and what effect that would have on starting to fit 6s in, and work out what to do with those pesky 4s!

I didn’t help myself by lazily ‘solving’ 27A as LIMES (part of = SEMI plus L, equivalent of EL, revolutionary?), which fitted in the alphabetical order, but threw me off kilter. Two key PDMs were

• a) realising that if DRIVE was at 20A, 4D was ??T??V, which only matches to SATNAV, which wasn’t an obvious 6 answer. This meant that that slot might be a 4, and DITE seemed to fit there, meaning the remaining extra bars could be pencilled in, for now… and …
• b) getting PIPPA (Middleton) for ‘Will’s sister-in-law. I’d assumed it would be some obscure Shakespearean character! This seemed to fit at 23A, instead of LIMES, and allowed three 6-letter Ps to flesh out bottom left quadrant, once I’d also corrected PEOPLE to PEEPUL.

From hereon in it was pretty much the usual virtuous circle – the crossers helping solve the remaining clues, including TIME-SPIRIT as the remaining 10, which in turn gave more crossers, etc.

Looking back, my initial positioning of BLASTODERM and the framework of 10s was fortuitous – I could have put BLASTODERM down from the top, ASTRINGENT across, etc., and ended up with a mirror image around the leading diagonal, but that would have meant 5 Down clues from top left, which wouldn’t have fit with the positioning of that one clue number – 4D, which is presumably what it was there to do! So my stab in the dark avoided the need to erase and reposition, as I would have had to if I had gone the other way.

Anyway, all that remained was to add/cross-reference the clue numbers and work out the nth letters of various clues, which eventually yielded ‘TWENTY-FOUR UNCHECKED CELLS’ to be highlighted, and the final realisation that they consisted of twelve lots of EV! ‘I am what I am‘, indeed!

 

A pretty amazing feat of grid construction, with some clEVer devices along the way – not just a jigsaw, but a jigsaw where you have to invent your own slots with extra bars! And then neatly making sure those nth letters were in the right places, without necessarily making the surface readings too clunky.

Chapeau to Artix for an interesting (and initially daunting!) challenge, and I trust all is clear above and below…

 

Across
Clue No	Nth letter	Solution	Clue (definition underlined) Logic/Parsing
29D	E	AGNIZE	Worry dramatically, losing ball? Tell in confession (as before) (6) AG(O)NIZE, suffer intently, or dramatically, losing O – round letter, ball [agnize being archaic, i.e. as before, for to acknowledge or confess]
9D		ARECAS	Pieces of ground seeded with 100 trees (6) ARE_AS (pieces of ground) around (seeded with) C (100, Roman numeral)
15D	U	ASTRINGENT	Contracting yakuza’s trailer, transported around Hertfordshire town (10) A (last letter, or trailer, of yakuzA) + S_ENT (transported0 around TRING (Hertfordshire town)
39A		ATTLEE	Clement? He wanted reforms in prime locations! (6) prime position anagram(!), i.e. reforms, of letters in prime number positions in ‘cLEmEnT he wAnTed’ [Clement ATTLEE, former UK Prime Minster]
26D		AVISO	A flap failing leads to vessel being lost (5) A + VISO(R) (flap, failing to finish) [aviso being historic – lost – for an ‘advice-boat’, or vessel]
14A	O	BLASTODERM	Layer of cells coursing in bloodstream only once old (10) subtractive anag, i.e. coursing, of BLO(O)DSTREAM with only one O (old)
16A	R	BOSKER	Jolly good of Australian, once farmer, to accept Slovak currency (6) BO_ER (South African farmer, of Dutch descent) around SK (Slovak Koruna) [not BONZER, also Aussie slang for ‘very good’, as I originally tried! The ‘once’ is key, as bosker is obsolete, whereas bonzer is current]
21A	C	DEEPS	At sea, lowest points set career back (5) SPEED (career) set back = DEEPS (lowest points of the sea)
1D		DIBBLE	As seen on TV, fireman‘s garden tool (6) double defn. – DIBBLE was a fireman in ‘Camberwick Green’ ; and a DIBBLE, or dibber, is a garden tool [cue recital of the Camberwick Green roll-call, for those of a certain age!]
4D	E	DITE	Bad editor omitting central part of sports composition once (4) subtractive anag, i.e. bad, of EDIT(OR), removing the central part of spORts
20A		DRIVE	Way to approach opening shot at Birkdale (5) double defn. – a DRIVE can be an approach road, e.g. to a house, or golf club; and a DRIVE can be an opening shot at Birkdale, example of said golf club!
1A		DUENDE	Scottish city rezones terminus that’s inspiration of Gaudi (6) DUNDE(E) (Scottish city) ‘re-zoning’ the last letter, or terminus, can give DUENDE, Spanish inspiration
13D		EDGED	Gradually pushed Editors to accept grid initially (5) ED + ED (editors) accepting G (Grid, initially)
6D		ENERVE	Crumbling veneer to weaken in olden days (6) anag, i.e. crumbling, of VENEER
13A	F	ENTIRE	Sense of rage after NHS department’s left undoctored (6) ENT (NHS Department, Ear Nose & Throat) + IRE (sense of rage)
15D	I	EPISPASTIC	Blistering note in lengthy film about health clubs (10) EPI_C (lengthy film) around SPAS (health clubs) + TI (note, te, in sol-fa notation)
31A	D	ERNE	Wise, for example, to unwed fourth predatory bird! (4) ERN(I)E (Ernie Wise, comedian) removing, or un-wedding, I (fourth letter)
17A	U	GRIECE	EU country alters just one of its commonest features in quirky step (6) GR(E)ECE (EU country) altering one of its Es, the most common letter, to give GRIECE [griece being obsolete/dialect, i.e. quirky, for a step, or flight of steps]
11A		IN VAIN	Without scoring at home, l got into lead (6, two words) IN (home) + VA_N (lead, vanguard) around I
19A	N	KSAR	Cycle round tiny island for historic title (4) SAR(K) – tiny Channel island – cycling its last letter to the front = KSAR, variant on tsar
18A		LATHES	Man’s fixated on muscle shapes (6) LAT (latissimus dorsi, muscle) + HES (man’s)
28D	K	LESSER	Second-rate baron off to glorify King’s mother (6) (B)LESS (glorify, less B – baron) + ER (Elizabeth Regina, the current King’s mother)
33A	C	LIGETI	Serial l get into features avant-garde composer (6) hidden word in ‘seriaL I GET Into’ [Gyorgy Ligeti, Hungarian experimental/avante garde composer]
27A		MELIA	As part of revolutionary target, US tracks trees (5) M_IA (aim, or target, revolutionary) around EL (US, elevated railroad, tracks)
27D	C	MOOPS	Sturgeon’s nibbles created by McDonalds primarily? Oh dear (5) M (primary letter of McDonalds) + OOPS (oh dear!)
3D	W	NASKHI	Jawi succeeded this in cursively snakish form? (6) additive anagram – NASKHI (cursive Arabic handwriting) plus S (succeeded) can form SNAKISH [JAWI being another Arabic script]
12D	Y	NORSE	Scan which way to go? Here are two options (5) N (north) OR SE (south east) are two possible ways to go! [Scan short for Scandinavian]
34A	E	ORSINI	Papal family‘s gold-tinted head on statue in Italy (6) OR (heraldry, gold-tinctured) + S (head, or first letter, of Statue) + IN + I (Italy) [Prominent Roman family who presumably supplied a few Popes from the 1200s to the 1700s…]
32A		OVERGO	Forbear to speak of Port Authority after both directors quit (6) (D)OVER (port) + GO(D) (authority), both without D – director – so ‘directors quitting’
24D	E	PEEPUL	What will define answer here? “Bo” will, by the sound of it (6) homophone, i.e. by the sound of it – PEEPUL (the Bo tree, under which the Buddha attained enlightenment) could sound (depending on your accent!) like PEEP (Bo Peep, nursery rhyme character) + ‘LL (contraction of will) [not PEOPLE, as I originally mis-homophoned it!]
25D		PETITE	Resulting size, if desire for food’s not apparent? (6) (AP)PETITE – desire for food, losing AP, apparent […resulting in the size one might become by restricting desire for food?!]
23A	H	PIPPA	Will’s sister-in-law to get the better of office worker (5) PIP (get the better of) + PA (Personal Assistant, office worker) [Prince William’s S-I-L, not Will Shakespeare’s, or one of his characters!]
23D		PRIVET	Pastor to fix hedge (6) P (pastor) + RIVET (to fix)
35D	L	RANA	Cold-blooded Amazonian killer wastes holy prince (4) (PI)RANA – cold-blooded Amazonian killer fish, lsing, or wasitng, PI, holy, holier-than-thou
10D		SEVERE	Hack gets close to Lachaise grave (6) SEVER (hack) + E (closing letter of lachaisE)
38A		SNEEZE	Violent emission seen about Zimbabwe’s borders (6) SNEE (anag, i.e. about, of SEEN) + ZE (borders, or outer letters, of ZimbabwE)
7D	N	STRIKE	Hit upon strong former President (6) STR (strong) + IKE (Dwight Eisenhower, former US President)
37A	S	TENUTO	Sustained a tad more than one over the eight’s socially acceptable before the hour of…? (6) TEN (a tad more than nine, which is ‘one over the eight’!) + U (socially acceptable, not non-U) + TO (before the hour of…)
8D	T	TIME SPIRIT	Rag irrational score by MacMillan, the genius of the age (10, two words) TIME_S (a newspaper, or rag) + PI (irrational number) + RIT (score, or scratch, Scottish, i.e. by MacMillan)
2D	T	UNLOAD	Struggling Oxford University land dump (6) anag, i.e. struggling, of OU (Oxford University) + LAND
40A		VARVED	Maybe French disease engulfs tributary of Rhône stratified with sediment (6) V_D (syphilis, or venereal disease, ‘the French disease’, maybe caught by not using a ‘French letter’?!) around ARVE (a tributary of the Rhone) [not VEINED, as I learned from searching a list of tributaries of the Rhone!]
22D		VELETA	Halved travel time to arrive for dance (6) (TRA)VEL (halved) + ETA (estimated time of arrival)
5A		VESTAS	Matches Danish wind turbine maker (6) double defn. – VESTAS are a brand of match; and VESTAS ™ is a Danish wind turbine maker!
30D		VOICED	Aired unoccupied church parts (6) VOI_D (unoccupied) parted by CE (Church of England)