This was tough – lots of tricky parsing, and I’m not fully confident in my reading of a few clues – have now made multiple edits thanks to Jack Of Few Trades, KVa, and Shirl in the comments. Favourites were 9ac, 3dn, and 8dn. Thanks to Enigmatist
Day: 19 March 2026
Independent 12,307 by Dalibor
Dalibor makes a welcome appearance today.
Enigmatic Variations 1737 What he said by Vismut
A complex preamble – the useful bits – remove a word from all bar 2 clues and use the first and last letters to produce 4 messages. One is a quotation – the second message is an instruction based on the previous 4 words of the quotation. The third is the unchecked letters for the perimeter and the last a second instruction to put the speaker’s name in the grid. Then highlight what he’ll do no matter what.
Financial Times 18,322 by ARTEXLEN
Artexlen is this morning’s FT compiler.